GENEROUS GIFTS.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLIV, Issue 1001, 28 April 1924, Page 10

GENEROUS GIFTS.

LORD NORTHCLIFFE'S WILL. LEGAL DIRECTION SOUGHT. LONDON, April 2. Fifty lawyers, including 26 barristers, each equipped with a pile of documents, crowded into the Chancery Court for the Lord Northeliffe will case, the main object of which is to obtain a judicial interpretation of certain clauses in the will and to ascertain whether the directors of_ Lord IVorthcliffe companies, also 1927 employees, are entitled to legacies. The testator bequeathed a phenomenal number of legacies, and the names of beneficiaries receiving from £IOOO to £SO covered three sheets. The late Lord Northeliffe also bequeathed £IOOO to every director of tho newspaper companies of which he was a director, and three months' salary to 1927 employees. , Lord Northeliffe resigned the chairmanship of his companies in 1919, but continued to exercise the most active control of his papers, and attended daily conferences with editors and heads of departments to consider the contents of the following day's papers. COUNSEL'S ARGUMENT. Under the articles of association of his chief companv, Lord Northeliffe was a lifetime director. Counsel argued that though he had resigned the chairmanship of the company, he had continued as director, exercising absolute control of his papers, therefore his co-directors were entitled to legacies. , T , Mr Justice Russell ruled that Lord Northeliffe was not a director of the companies reconstructed in 1922, therelore the directors were not entitled to the legacies; but as there had been no transfer of property from the old to the new company, and the employees were carrying on the old business, they were therefore entitled to the legacies.