SIMPSON V. SIMPSON.

Otago Witness, Issue 3331, 16 January 1918, Page 46

SIMPSON V. SIMPSON.

TO THE EDITOR. gin,—A few weeks ago there appeared in your columns a report of a proceeding in the Supremo Court in an action brought by me against my wife for the enforcement of a certain agreement. Your report consisted of an abstract of my statement of claim and of the statement of defence; but, as you are now aware, the proceeding before the court wa> simply an argument of a question of law—namely, the question -whether the statements set forth in the claim (assuming them to bo correct) constituted a good cause of action. The defence did not (and could not in such a proceeding) come before the court at all. In publishing the statements contained in the defence you did me a great injustice, as people who did not understand the nature of the proceeding concluded that the statements .contained in the defence must lie true, as they were apparently uncontradicted. The fact is, as you now know, that no evidence was adduced or could have been adduced either in support or in disproof of those statements. I have since submitted to you copies of three affidavits sworn before the commencement of the action, and filed in the Supreme Court, one by myself, one by Mr W. H. Warren, and the other by Mrs Cameron, the wife of J. D. Cameron, the Dunedin manager for the Westport Coal Company, together with a letter from tiro Rev. Mr Ashford, whose church my wife and I attended at St. Clair, and I feel sure that if you take the trouble to road these you will feel bound to admit that you have (unintentionally) done me an injustice. —I am, etc., Wm. Sijipsox. Dunedin, January .9. [We recognise that the case was one in which the defence was not entered into and that the publication of the statement of defence, containing allegations which, as the documents that have been submitted to us show would have been contradicted upon a trial of the action, reasonably _ entitles Mr Simpson, to complain that an injustice was unintentionally done to him.— Ed. O.D.T.] 15 •