ALLEGED COMBINE.

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XII, Issue 233, 14 September 1922, Page 4

ALLEGED COMBINE.

CHARGE AGAINST COAL COMPANIES. Dunedin, Sept. 13. The healing was continued before Mr Justice Hoskmg in the Supreme Court to-day of the case in which the Crown sued a number of coal and other companies in Dunedin and elsewhere, and the coal merchants of Oamaru, claiming a penalty of £5OO against each for a breach of the Commercial Trusts Act. 1910. After counsel for the defendants had completed their addresses to the Court, the Crown Prosecutor, Mr. F. B. Adams, in reply to the arguments for the defence, said there was no evidence to support the contention that the members of the association were merely distributing agents of the companies. The merchants were not distributing agents, but competitors among themselves. There was also evidence of control over the demand for ooal in Oamaru by the instance of the exclusion of certain coal. The chief function of the association was to fix prices. There was a partial monopoly where a body of traders had practically exclusive control of any class ot goods. He submitted that the Coal Merchants’ Association was a body having tor its object the creating or maintaining of a monopoly. Counsel submitted that there was an element of the ridicoktus in the suggestion that the Oamaru merchants should meet and refuse to have anything to do with the Cash Purchase Association because they considered it to be a commercial trust. He suggested that the real stumbling block was the discount which the Cash Purchase Association allowed. His Honour reserved judgment.