POSSESSION OF DOCUMENTS CLAIMED.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18630, 6 December 1928, Page 16

POSSESSION OF DOCUMENTS CLAIMED.

Per Press Association. AUCKLAND. December 5. Arising out of the defalcations of J. 11. V. Mansill, an Auckland solicitor now serving a sentence of imprisonment for theft and forgery, judgment was given by Mr Justice Frazer, in the Supreme Court, in a case in which John and William Andrew Kirkness sued Joseph George Sheldon for possession of a memorandum of mortgage and a memorandum of discharge. Plaintiffs had paid to Mansill £450 which they had owed, under mortgage, to defendant. Mansill, instead of handing the money to defendant, misappropriated it. Defendant had signed the memorandum . of discharge, which he left with Mansill, whom he authorised to accept re payment, but later he told Mansill not to accept repayment and instructed him to cancel the memorandum of discharge. Mansill, in a breach of his instructions, did not cancel it and. w’hen re-payment was made, produced it to William Kirkness.

His Honor said that Mansill had obtained defendant’s signature to * the

memorandum of discharge in such a manner as entitled plaintiffs to act on it, and defendant was accordingly stopped from saving that Mansill was not his solicitor, when he produced the document to William Kirkness. “Where one of two innocent persons had to suffer, through the fraud of a third, ’ said His Honor. “ the loss must fall on him who, by his indiscretion, enabled the third person to commit the fraud.” Judgment was given for plaintiffs for possession of the memorandum of discharge and o'f the memorandum of mortgage, with costs as on a claim for £450.