SINGULAR AND ROMANTIC CASE.

Wellington Independent, Volume XXIV, Issue 2978, 9 April 1870, Page 6

SINGULAR AND ROMANTIC CASE.

[Glasgow Hbbaiod, January 18.] The hearing of the case 1 Pronger v Matthews, which involves an interesting legal point, and which had already occupied the Court of Chancery for three days, was resumed yesterday morning before the Lord Chancellor and Lord Justice Griffard. ' The case was tried before the French, courts, and there was a division of opinion on the issues raised between the avocats of the Paris and the metropolitan bar. The case came before the Court in the form of an appeal from the decision of Vice-Chancellor Malms in favor of the defendant. The wife of the plaintiff, a native of France, had, after three years cohabitation, separated from her husband by consent, and there was no issue of the marriage. She had adopted a child, named Henriette Leoni, and had executed a settlement of a portion of the money she had acquired on herself, and after her decease on the child, who is at present in a convent in England. It was alleged by the plaintiff that Madame Pronger had lived an adulterous life %with two persons, but this was denied by the defendant, who is a solicitor and trustee of the settlement, the validity of which is now disputed. She traded under the name of Chevron, and realised property in India by her own exertions. Her separation from her husband lasted for thirty- three years, and, although they 1 corresponded regularly, they never resumed cohabitation, and she died in Calcutta, This latter fact was the ground on which the Court assumed jurisdio- . tion in dealing with the settlement of Madame Pronger— though, being a married woman, it was not asserted that she: was a> domiciled English subject. ; The plaintiff* claimed the property settled by Madame Pronger under the French law, by which, a married woman cannot have any right to 1 property realised by her own exertions; The' money she left to the infant amounted to : £2000. £1000 has been already spent Anlitigation, and it was stated that the plaintiff,being out of the jurisdiction of. the English, courts.it would be very difficult <tp'f obtain., costs from him in the event of the final deoi? sion being against him. /; Mr Glass, Q.C., and Mr Hastings appeared

for the appellant, and Sir Houndell Palmer and Mr Cotton, Q.C., and other learned gentlemen for the trustee of the child. The Lord Chancellor, at the close of the arguments, said that it was the opinion of himself and the Lord Justice that the case should be referred to a French barrister. It must stand over until Monday next, and if the defendant did not agree to the reference, then the Court would deal with the case as well as they could.