SUPPLY OF CURRENT

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21909, 22 March 1933, Page 4

SUPPLY OF CURRENT

ACTION AGAINST FREEZING WORKS * . 1,1 V POWER BOARD CLAIMS £2083. (Per United Press Association.) WELLINGTON, March 21. Legal argument is being heard by Mr Justice Blair in the Supreme Court in a case of great importance to electric power boards. The parties are the Hawke’s Bay Electric Power Board and Thomas Borthwick and Sons (Australasia), Ltd. The board is claiming from the company £2083, which it alleges is payable under the terms of an agreement entered into in 1927 for the supply and reception of electric current at the freezing works of the company at Paki Paki, near Hastings. The works were very extensively damaged by the Hawke’s Bay earthquake on February 3, 1931, and were not rebuilt. The electric supply agreement was for five years with a guarantee by the company to pay a minimum amount of £IOOO to the board. The claim of the Power Board is for the period after the earthquake and until the termination of "the agreement on November 1, 1932, together with an addition period of six months by way of notice. The hearing of evidence was taken in Napier on March 6,7, and 8 before Mr Justice Blair, who then adjourned the action for the hearing of legal argument. The presentation of this by Mr H. F. Johnston, K.C„ for the defendant company, occupied the whole of the day. The main defences to the claim are that the agreement was frustrated or rendered impossible of performance by the earthquake, that the power board because of the damage suffered to its plant by the earthquake was not able to supply power for a period of several days, during which time the defendant company had to arrange its own lighting in order to load out of cold stores the frozen meat which they contained, and that since the earthquake most of the defendant’s stock bought in Hawke’s Bay has been killed and frozen at two other freezing works adjacent to Hastings, which has resulted in increased consumption of electrical energy by these two works. The hearing will be continued tomorrow: