ALLEGED CONSPIRACY

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXIX, Issue 20028, 8 February 1935, Page 5

ALLEGED CONSPIRACY

TRIAL OF ACCUSED By Telegraph—Press Association WELLINGTON, February 7. An unexpected development in the trial of Charles Ernest Vickers and Ernest Mabin Gilmour, jointly charged in the Supreme Court with conspiracy to defraud, and false pretences, in connection with the Craftsman Manufacturing Coy, 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’s evidence was heard by Mr Hislop, who is to be called by the Crown, as a rebutting witness at the conclusion of the defence evidence. Vickers contended that the company could have been flourishing on if the sale of reflectors had been gone on with. He never knew anything was wrong until he received the warrant last April. Had he been asked he would have come over to New Zealand to get behind the company. He was never given a chance to explain. T. C. A. Hislop, barrister and solicitor, 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 Coy of New Zealand up to the time of the statutory meeting, including Vickers, knew of the absence of a patent. Mr Leicester: Do you consider a trade mark adequate protection? Witness: Alone it has little value, but when the process of the manufacture of the lights was secret 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 the patent rights had been left in the air by Mr Hislop, and that for some weeks the position had not been made clear.

The hearing will be continued tomorrow.