TEAPOT DOME.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 17569, 20 June 1925, Page 2

TEAPOT DOME.

DECISION GIVEN. END OF OIL CASE. By Telegraph.—Press Assn.—Copyright. Aus. & X.Z. Cable Association. (Received June 20. 2 p.m.) NEW YORK, June 19. A message from Cheyenne, Wyoming, states that the lease of the Mammoth Oil Company on the Teapot Dome naval oil reserve has been helch legal by Federal Judge Kennedy in giving his decision in the Government suit that lease of the ground was obtaine.d by Sinclair from Mr Fall, then Secretary for the Interior, through fraud and conspiracy. In a lengthy decision comprising 2000 words, the Judge ruled that the Government had failed to prove evidence sufficient to nullify the lease. The decision ends a long political controversy on litigation arising from Fall’s action in leasing the oil lands to Sinclair’s Mammoth Company, and is rendered three months after the attorneys had argued the legal and highly technical aspects of the lease before Judge Kennedy. It is generally conceded that Messrs Roberts and Pomerne, Government counsel, where at a disadvantage during the trial through the refusal of Fall and others to testify on the grounds that they might incriminate themselves, and also through the absence of other witnesses.