BREACHES OF BANKRUPTCY ACT

Stratford Evening Post, Volume I, Issue 291, 18 November 1931, Page 5

BREACHES OF BANKRUPTCY ACT

NEW PLYMOUTH CASE

George Edward Clout, formerly in business in New Plymouth as a butcher, was remanded for sentence by Mr. Justice Reed yesterday, after being found guilty on ten out of thirteen counts charging him with breaches of the penal clauses of the Bankruptcy Act. Eight of the counts on which he was convicted concerned four debts contracted in July, 1930, in Feilding with Levin and Co. (two debts), Walter J. Huston, stock buyer, Danner virke, and Dalgety and Co., Ltd., Palmerston North. These debts were for payment for sheep purchased for his butchery business in New Plymouth. The Crown alleged that they had been contracted when Clout could not have had any reasonable or probable expectation of being able to pay them, as well as his other debts, and that under the false pretence of carrying on business and dealing in the ordinary course of trade, he had obtained property on credit and had failed to pay for It. The other two proved offences were that within three years before his bankruptcy, he failed to keep account books proper and usual in a butcher's business and sufficient to set forth his business transactions ,and to disclose his financial position; and that by gambling, drunkenness and unjustifiably extravagant living he had brought about his bankruptcy. Not guilty verr|ietH were brought in on two Qounta alleging failure to deliver to the assignee, and, alternatively, with concealing his ledger. At the direction of His Honour the Jury thew out also a count alleging that within three years before the commencement of the bankruptcy, about December 10, he made payments out of the regular course of his business, not being for the ordinary expenses of himself or his family, in that he spent a considerable amount of money in gambling, drinking and extravagant living. The jury was out for an hour.