"TOOK LAWYER'S ADVICE."

Northern Advocate, 15 March 1913, Page 6

"TOOK LAWYER'S ADVICE."

A BIGAMIST SENT TO GAOL.

Three months' hard labor was the sentence imposed at the Melbourne Criminal Court on February 27 £p a man who said that he had offended on legal advice. The man's name was George Krammer, and the charge against him was bigamy.

His defence was that 14 or 15 months ago he consulted a, solicitor regarding a divorce suit which he proposed bringing against his wife. After the solicitor had made inquiries he said to Krammer: "It's all right, you can marry again. Your wife • was married to someone else when you married her." Acting on the legal advice he married a second time. He could not read or write, and he believed that the solicitor told him what was true.

The Chief Justice ruled that the mere fact that accused consulted a solicitor and took his advice was no reasonable excuse. If thai excuse held good it would be possible for any man to say that he had consulted a solicitor, and, being told something without being given facts, left his own wife to take up someone else. '•If a man consults a lawyer," said his Honor, "he does so at his own risk, because lawyers are not recognised by law as being different from anybody else. His mere advice cannot be accepted as the required legal proof in such matters as this. I must advise the jury that the prisoner's belief was not founded on reasonable grounds." The jury returned a verdict of guilty, and his Honor ordered accused to be imprisoned for three months with hard labor.