AIDING AND ABETTING.

Sun (Christchurch), Volume VI, Issue 1787, 5 November 1919, Page 11

AIDING AND ABETTING.

LAUNDRY MANAGER CHARGED. UNWASHED TROOPSHIP BLANKETS. A further charge in connection with the question of dirty blankets being supplied to the troopship Pakeha by | Brown's Highbury Laundry, Limited, was heard at the Magistrate's Court this morning before Mr S. E. McCarthy, S.M. Henry Eugene Street (Mr W. J. Sim) was charged with aiding and abetting] the company trading under the style of Brown's Highbury Laundry, Ltd., in a breach of a war contract providing for the washing of military blankets by the said company of which the defendant was manager. Mr S. G. Raymond, K.C., appeared for the Crown. He stated in opening, that his prosecution would be on similar lines to the previous one against the laundry company, and it would not be necessary for him to re-narrate the facts of the ease. He cited several standard enses bearing upon the charge preferred. It was evident, said Mr Raymond, if yestexday 's evidence was to be taken as correct that Street was an aider in the ease and was the chief personal I malefactor. Apart from the filth acquired by the blankets, there was the danger of their carrying disease to be considered. Street had shown a supreme disregard of the duty he owed to the soldiers for the purpose of making a fraudulent gain from the Crown, by alleging that) he had washed the blankets. If the facts were considered correct by the Bench, it was not a case for a pecuniary penalty only. A. Pressney Farrow, "accountant for' the Shaw, Savill and Albion Company at Lyttelton, and Thomas Harry Chudleigh, Marine Superintendent at Wellington for the same company, Herbert Clayden, South Island Marine Superintendent for the Shaw, Savill and Albion Company, and Harold Ernest Patchett, of the New Zealand permanent staff, also repeated their previous evidence. Herbert Osmond Solomon, who had been in the employ of the laundry company at the time of the Pakeha blanketwashing, stated to Mr Sim that the work of washing was done worse than at the beginning of his employment. In witness's opinion about three-quarters of the blankets were not washed. There might have been odd blankets with ineradicable stains upon them, but they were not numerous.

William Ernest Best, chairman of the board of directors of Brown's Highbury Laundry, Ltd., stated that he recollected the defendant calling upon him and stating' that he was in trouble over some blankets from the Pakeha. Defendant confessed to him that he had not washed all the blankets. He protested that lie could not complete the washing in the time. Witness severely reprimanded defendant, and got into touch with Mr Hunter at once. The whole matter was a complete surprise to him. The defendant seemed on the verge of a complete breakdown and told him that he had worked for a stretch of 36. hours. To Mr Raymond: He realised the gravity of the situation and had immediately seen Mr Hunter. Defendant had boon manager since the incorporation of the company in August, 1917. He had been in the employ of the late proprietor of the laundry for 14 years. Mr Sim stated in his opening remarks after the luncheon adjournment that, if it could not be proved that the company had committed the offence, the defendant, Street, could not, be convicted of aiding and abetting the offence with which the company was charged. He submitted that no contract had been proved to wash 4000 blankets, lie proposed to bring forward witnesses who would demonstrate the danger of finding that there had been a contract on inferential evidence. It was of paramount importance that the Crown prove its contention of there being a contract up to the hilt. The only contract the laundry could have been deemed to enter into was to wash as many of the blankets as it possibly could. He ■rf'ould produce evidence to show that the manager and his assistants worked as hard as they could to wash as many of the blankets as possible. The physical impossibility of performance was incompatible with the state of mind necessary for a "wilful" breach. He submitted that there was no breach of the contract, on the grounds that there must be a repudiation of the contract—a blank refusal to fulfil it, before a breach within the meaning of the regulation quoted by the Crown could be committed. He submitted that the company and the defendant, had no knowledge that the contract for washing was a Crown one. Had they been informed that the contract was with the Crown, knowing the busy state of the laundry at the time, and knowing the exacting nature of the Crown's contracts, they would certainly have refused the contract altogether. (Proceeding.)