MILK PRICE DISPUTE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LVIII, Issue 17880, 7 September 1921, Page 8

MILK PRICE DISPUTE.

BOARD OF TRADE RATE.

SUPPLIERS AND VENDORS.

INTERPRETATION OF CONTRACT.

Reserved decision was given in the Magistrate's Court yesterday by Mr. H. W. Bundle, S.M., in the case in which a claim for £82 9s 2d was made by Hill Bros. (Mr. Jordan), farmers, Hobsonville, against the Takapuna Dairy Co. (Mi. A. H. Johnstone), milk vendors, of Devonport. The amount was alleged to he for milk cold and delivered to the defendants by plaintiffs last May. A contract bad been entered into between the parties in August, 1920, on the basis of Board of Trade prices. Definite prices bad not, however, been fixed by the board for the period in dispute. The question at issue was the meaning attached to Board of Trade prices. Defendants counterclaimed for £85 lis Sd, damages for alleged short supply of milk. Though delivering his decision yesterday, the magistrate deferred formal judgment until after the hearing of the counter-claim tomorrow week.

The magistrate said that in August, 1920, the date of the agreement between the parties, there was no Board of Trade price under the Board of Trade Act, that was the price fixed by Order in Council in accordance with the Act. There could, however, be no question that both parties to the contract then understood the Board of Trade prices as those fixed by Mr. W. G. McDonald, chairman of the Board of Trade, and notified to producers and retailers—ls 4d a gallon for the summer, and Is 8d a gallon for the winter. These prices were in fact not altered when the winter season commenced on May I, therefore he thought the producers were entitled to claim them. Whether the Board of Trade had power to alter them was not a matter for the Court to determine. It had not done so. The most it did was to request > retailers not to charge winter retail prices to tSie public. He came to this conclusion with some regret, as he thought this was a matter in which the vendors were actuated by the desire that the price should not be raised to the public, and the Board of Trade appre dated this fact and tried to arrange a settlement. It decided that prices should not be changed. This decision, continued the magistrate, had to be taken to mean that in the opinion of the board either that wholesale Of retail prices fixed in August last were reasonable, even in view of the altered circumstances, or that those prices were not index prices, but absolute for a vear. The mlk vendors were placed in the unfortunate position of having during the month of May to pay the producer winter prices, while they chareed the publie summer prices. This position was, he felt bonnd to state, to a certain extent due to the wording of a telegram from the Board of Trade to t!he chairman of the Milk Vendor*' Association, in May.