THE CLAROGENE SYNDICATE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21986, 22 June 1933, Page 6

THE CLAROGENE SYNDICATE

FURTHER LITIGATION ACTION BY CHARLES BODDIE. (Peb United Press Association.) WELLINGTON, June 21. The affairs of Reginald Charles Boddi* and ‘the syndicate formed for manufacturing a disinfectant known as Clarogene again occupied the'attention of Mr Justice Ostler in the Supreme Court to-day. lloddie and his wife, Hilda Mary Boddie, proceeded against four members oflhe syndicate—James Dickson < Sievwright, > Marguerite Helen Mille, William Thomson Neill, and John M‘Lachlan and the Clarogene Company, Ltd., alleging that notice of forfeiture- of five-twelfths of the shares that he and his wife held in the syndicate was illegal. After notice of the forfeiture of-the shares had been served on the plaintiffs by other members ' of the syndicate a private company called the Clarogene Company, Ltd., was formed, and in this company the plaintiffs claim that they should be shareholders. The plaintiffs ask for a declaration that the sale by defendants to the defendant company of the Clarogene formula and of the goodwill of' the business of manufacturing and selling Clarogene is null and void, or alternatively a declaration that the defendant, company holds the formula upon trust for members of the syndicate, including the plaintiffs, a declaration that the notice of forfeiture sent to the plaintiffs is null and ineffective and a perpetual injunction restraining the defendants from disclosing the formula to anyone else and from manufacturing it except otherwise than on behalf of the syndicate members, including plaintiffs, an account by the defendant company of any profits made by it from sales of or dealings in Clarogene', £250 damages frojn the company for the passing off of an inferior preparation as Clarogene and £SOO damages from the four defendants for breach oL contract. The defendants admit sending to plaintiffs notice of forfeiture, setting out the reasons for tha action taken.

Mr Spratt submitted that the calculated object of the plaintiff in entering into an agreement with the defendants and the necessary effect of such an agree-, ment were to defraud a third party, “ Nados ” Company, and to injure it in respect to the proprietary rights. „ The case was not merely one of fraud against the defendants.- If it were, then they ' would be under the necessity for repudiating before seeking relief by defending the claim. They had not repudiated or rescinded, but, on the contrary, had asserted to the utmost all their rights. His Honor said he could understand the argument quite clearly if the article concerned were a patented one. Then “ Nados ” could restrain the defendants from using the formula. As it was now, the “Nados” Company had no complaint against the defendants, the formula having been got in good faith. That waa the difficulty he saw. Mr Evans Scott said there was a suggestion that the defendants to carry on in a way which would not legally or morally be a breach of the rights of the Christchurch company, but one witness, A. R. Roberts, in the preceding slander action, had said the defendants ’ told him if the present formula were not successful it was intended to go back to the old one.

After hearing legal argument his Honor reserved his decision.