AN INTERESTING CASE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18512, 24 March 1922, Page 6

AN INTERESTING CASE

A CONFLICT OP INTERESTS. (Fbou Odb Own Correspondent.) i CROMWELL, March 23. The Warden’s Court was occupied from noon until 11.30 p.m. yesterday. hearing .a case in which mining and agricultural interests conflicted. The basis of this was an application by John Halliday for a special alluvial claim of over 100 acres ct llannockburn, including the land held Ly Ellen Mary Gibson, who objected, under a freehold title, converted from an occupation lease. The applicants have been working as a syndicate under a prospecting license for some 10 years, with poor results, but they now claimed that there were better and more payable prospects. There was considerable legal argument on the law points, and voluminous evidence by witnesses on each side. The objector, Gibson, sought to show that the ground could 1 e more profitably worked by tunnelling, thereby leaving the surface intact, and she had several recognised experts testifying to that effect. Other witnesses for the objector gave the agricultural value of land at GSO per acre and over. The applicants’ witnesses considered sluicing the only reasonable and profitable means of working the ground, and claimed the right to mine the area under the Act, and that the warden had no power to impose conditions respecting the destruction of agricultural land. in giving judgment the warden held that Re had power to impose any conditions. He recommended the application, subject to survey, but imposed a condition that the ground was to be mined by some method whiclv would not interfere with the surface. This was actually _ a verdict for objector. Gibson. The applicants were also ordered to pay costs in the vicinity of £SO.