MORTGAGED SHARES

Taranaki Daily News, 19 July 1933, Page 7

MORTGAGED SHARES

NO BENEFIT FROM RELIEF ACT. DECISION OF FULL COURT. The Mortgagors Relief Act, 1931, does not. apply to mortgages of shares In companies, according to a reserved judgment of the Full Court, comprising ! the Chief Justice (Sir Michael Myers), i Mr. Justice Herdman, Mr. Justice Mac- ' Gregor, and Mr. Justice Kennedy, delivered in Wellington. The case concerned an application made under the Mortgagors Relief Act, 1931 and the Mortgagors and Tenants Relief Act, 1532, in respect to a mortgage of July 4, 1930, securing repayment of £6OOO upon three parcels of shares in banks. In the course of his judgment, Mr. Justice Herdman said: “If a mortgagor of shares can apply for relief, then it would follow that a person who had mortgaged debentures could apply for relief, and it ■ may be, but on this point I express no final opinion, that a local authority which had hypothecated its rates could appeal to the court for protection. If Parliament had intended to carry legislation which is confiscatory in its character to a distance which would include securities ! over ‘chattels,’ interpreting that term in its widest sense it should have said so in plain terms, but it has not done that.”In concurring with, the other four members of the court, Mr. Justice Blair said after having had the advantage of hearing a much fuller argument on the question involved, and on very careful reconsideration, and for the reasons so well expressed in judgments by the other members of the court, he had come to the conclusion that his oral judgment in a former case on the same point, Shashous v. Young, was wrong.

At the hearing Mr. H. E. Evans appeared for the applicant mortgagor, and Mr. R. E. Harding for the mortgagee.