A PROPERTY SALE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22742, 30 November 1935, Page 9

A PROPERTY SALE

ACTION IN CIVIL , COURT PLAINTIFF NON-SUITED In the Magistrate’s Court yesterday the hearing of the case in which Arthur John Fox and Sarah Fox proceeded against Louisa Thirza Oliver Millier and Frederick Millier on a claim for £llß as damages arising out of alleged misrepresentation made by the defendants in respect of the sale of a property to the plaintiffs. In the statement of claim it was stated that, in December last, the plaintiffs had agreed to purchase a property at NorthEast Valley with two dwellings for the sum of £2IOO from Louisa Thirza Oliver Millier. It was alleged that both defendants had made independent representations that the older house was sound and in good condition with the exception that one corner of a room was infested with borer, when it was known to both defendants that the building was infested with borer, the roof was decayed and leaking and the dwelling not in sound or good condition. The representations were, it wag contended, made by the defendants with the intention that the plaintiffs should act upon it and the latter had done so. The difference between the value of the old house as represented by the defendants and its real value was £llß. Mr J. M. Paterson appeared for the plaintiffs and Mr A. I. W. Wood for the defendants.

After counsel had addressed the court, the magistrate said that the parties had told diametrically opposed stories, and the difficulty was that there was practically no evidence outside that tendered by them, by which the truth of their versions could be checked. Fox’s evidence had been given very impressively, and if it were not true, he would strike one as being a first-class romancer. Nevertheless, the court, on this ground alone, could hardly decide in favour of the plaintiff, and it must have something more before it to justify its weighing down the scales in his favour. He must, therefore, be non-suited, with costs (£1 9s) and solicitor’s fee (£5 18s).