CONSPIRACY CHARGE

Taranaki Daily News, 8 February 1935, Page 5

CONSPIRACY CHARGE

CRAFTSMAN COMPANY CASE.

AN UNEXPECTED DEVELOPMENT.

By Telegraph—Press Association. Wellington, Last Night.

An unexpected development in the trial of Charles Ernest Vickers and Ern-est-Makin. Gilmour, jointly charged in the Supreme Court with conspiracy to defraud and false pretences in connection with the Craftsman Manufacturing Co., was the appearance in court this morning of Mr. T. C. A. Hislop, Mayor of Wellington, who, as a solicitor acting in the early stages of the company’s formation, has been mentioned in evidence.

Vickers contended that the company could have been a flourishing one if the sale of reflectors had gone on. He never knew anything was wrong until he received a warrant last April. Had he been asked, he would have come to New Zealand to get behind the company. He was never given a chance to explain. T. C. A. Hislop, called by the Crown, described how Vickers came to him with papers from Australia and how he went through them and found that no patent existed but only a trade-mark. All the principal people connected with the formation of the Craftsman Manufacturing Company of New Zealand up to the time of the statutory meeting, including Vickers, knew of the absence of the patent. Mr. Leicester: Do you consider the trade-mark adequate protection? Witness: Alone it has little value, but when the process of manufacture of the lights was a seerqt and difficult to imitate there would be some measure of protection. Addressing the jury Mr. Leicester said it was • a disagreeable process for one man to attack another of the same profession. He was not attacking Mr. Hislop personally, nor his attitude in connection’with the company. It did not matter whether Mr. Hislop was negligent or not, but he would make it the main plank in his case that the question of patent rights had been left in the air by Mr. Hislop, and that for some weeks the position was not made clear. The hearing will be continued tomorrow.