JUDICIAL PRECIPITATION.

Hawke's Bay Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 12648, 7 January 1904, Page 3

JUDICIAL PRECIPITATION.

The “ Law Journal ” tells the following story;—“ Lord Langdale often referred to a curious case before himself illustrative of the dangers of judicial precipitation. It turned on presumptive evidence of death. A sum of money in court was subject to a trust for a particular individual for life, and after his death was to be divided between , certain parties. These parties petitioned for payment of the fund to them, on the ground that the individual /in question, the (tenant-Cor-life, was dead. No positive evidence could be adduced of Ins death, but it was said that his death must be presumed, inasmuch as the evidence showed that he had gone abroad some twenty or thirty years ago, under circumstances of difficulty, and that no human being had since heard any tidings of him. This did not satisfy Lord Langdale, and he desired the case to stand over, intimating that if further evidence could be produced to corroborate the already strong presumption, ho would attend to it. Addi-, tional affidavits were accordingly filed, after the lapse of some time, and the case then appeared so strong tluil he made the order for division of the fund as prayed. The extraordinary portion of the case remains to be told. The order, when drawn up according to His Lordshop’s direction, was carried to the proper office to be entered, and the clerk whose duty it was to enter it, turned out to be the very individual on whose presumed death the order for payment was made. It seems that in early life he had been involved in scrapes and difficulties, which led him to fly his country, and to keep Jus (residence and career a secret from all his relatives; i#iat he had returned in time under a fictitious name tp this country, where he at length obtained a situation in the office in question, but without making himself known to anyone; that he was ignorant of his right in the fund in question; and that but for the remarkable accident just related he would have been deprived of these rights, and the fund would have been prematurely given over to persons not then entitled to it.”