ALLEGED LIBEL

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23686, 19 December 1938, Page 10

ALLEGED LIBEL

ACTION BY WATERSIDE WORKER SEQUEL TO ELECTION MEETING CANDIDATE AND PUBLISHER SUED (Peb United Press Association! NEW PLYMOUTH, Dec. 17. Proceedings involving a claim for £SO damages for alleged libel were brought by Thomas Farley, a waterside worker at New Plymouth, against Sidney George Smith, National candidate for New Plymouth, and Walter Crowley Weston (published of the Taranaki Herald) before Mr W. H. Woodward, S.M., in the New Plymouth Magistrate's Court yesterday. The action was brought as a result of ■statements said to have been made by Mr Smith in the course of an election address in the New Plymouth electorate at Moturoa School on Friday, September 30. The report of the meeting was published in the Taranaki Herald on the following afternoon. The alleged libel was contained in the statement: "If they'd caught you when you hopped your boat here and sent you back, it would be a good thing for the country. When my people came out to New Zealand they paid their fares." Farley took exception to the statements alleged to have been made by Smith, and interrupted the proceedings of the meeting, from which he was ejected by a police constable. No evidence was called on behalf of either defendant, and at the conclusion of the case the magistrate reserved his judgment, which, he said, he thought better to put into writing.