AN ILLEGAL CONTRACT.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 20601, 27 June 1930, Page 16

AN ILLEGAL CONTRACT.

WORK BY A SURVEYOR. PLAINTIFF NOT REGISTERED. [BY TELEGRAPH. —OWN CORRESPONDENT.] ROTORUA, Thursday. A caso of interest to surveyors, which was described by the presiding magistrate, Mr. S. L. Paterson, S.M., as probably tho first of its kind in New Zealand, was heard in the Magistrate's Court at Rotorua to-day, when J. Munro Wilson, an unregistered surveyor (Mr. Roe) sued Timborlands Woodpulp, Limited (Mr. Davys), for £124, balance alleged to be duo under a contract to do certain survey work on the company's forestry land at Taupo. It was contended for tho defence that tho Surveyors Registration Act of 1928 made it an offence for any unregistered surveyor to do any surface survey or boundary delineation intended to be tho subject of any plan under the Land Transfer Act. The plaintiff had pegged out a periphery survey. If tho pogs wero survey pegs, then ho had undertaken land transfer work. If tho pegs he put in wero not survey pegs, then they might bo mistaken for survey pegs, an offence under that Act. It was also contended that as the plaintiff was an unregistered surveyor, the contract was illegal. Tho magistrate said plaintiff was on tho horns of a dilemma. Whichever way he moved ho came within the penal clauses of the Act, and tho contract was accordingly illegal, and the amount claimed with respect to the survey contract could not be recovered. Costs wero awarded to the defendant.