SLANDER ON CLUB MEMBER

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23707, 14 January 1939, Page 14

SLANDER ON CLUB MEMBER

1500 DAMAGES AWARDED (From Our Own Correspondent) (By Air Mail) LONDON, Dec. 21. Damages of £SOO, with costs, were awarded at the Middlesex Sheriff’s Court to a club member who had been slandered by a fellow-member, a widow. The action was undefended. The plaintiff, Mr Harry Woudstra, 31, of Old Oak-road, Acton, W., had sued Mrs Sutton Chapman, whose last known address was stated to be in Bayswater, W. Mr Rodger Winn, for Mr Woudstra, said that he was a business man with high technical qualifications, who had been for some years studying methods of using waste products of fruit. Mrs Sutton Chapman told members of a club in Queen’s-gate, S.W., that Mr Woudstra had left the country because he was wanted by the police, and that he had been refused admis»ion to South Africa. "That is completely untrue,” declared Mr Winn. "There is not a shred of truth in any of these things that have been said.” Mr Woudstra told the court that a project to go to South Africa to develop a process for the extraction of fruit products had been held up since his partner heard Mrs Sutton Chapman’s allegations.