REFUSAL TO MOVE

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXI, Issue 21935, 19 October 1934, Page 15

REFUSAL TO MOVE

OCCUPANT OF HOUSE PREVIOUS CHANCES IGNORED ONE MONTH'S IMPRISONMENT The occupation of a house in Reimers Avenue, Sandfingham, without the permission of the State Advances "Department, again led to the appearance of n young man, Walter Woods, in th>> Magistrate's Court yesterday. On thU occasion an application by the department for aiii order for the possession of the house was heard by Mr. F. K. Hunt, S.M. Woods, who is an unemployed man with a wife and two children, first appeared in the Police Court before Mr. W. R. McKean, S.M., on September 14. charged with being found unlawfully upon the premises. On that occasion he said the amount of money ho was receiving on sustenance was not sufficient to pay for food and rent. "1 would either have to pay rent and let my family starve, or else live without paying rent," he said. "The only alternative was to walk into this house. I knew it was a State house." The case was adjourned for a week by the magistrate to give Woods an opportunity of leaving the house, which he had failed to do when he reappeared before Mr. McKean on September 21. As a result he was sentenced to one month's imprisonment, the issue of the warrant to be suspended for seven days to give him another oportunity of vacating the premises. In his defence in the. Magistrate's Court yesterday Woods quoted legal authority in support of his contention that only the owner of a house was entitled to issue a summons of the kind he had received, and not the State Advances Department, as the mortgagee in possession. In reply to the magistrate as to what his calling was Woods said he was an engineer, whereupon Mr. Hunt advised him to restrict his attention to work of that nature as his law was not sound. Woods contended that the vacation of the house would inflict hardship upon his wife and denied the truth of a suggestion that her mother would be able to take care of her. An order was made for the possession of the house within 48 hours. The Magistrate: You are not a crab hermit and cannot crawl into any place. At the conclusion of the hearing Woods was taken into custody to serve the month's imprisonment imposed by Mr. McKean on September 21.