Sporting and Dramatic REVIEW AND Licensed Victuallers’ Gazette. With which is incorporated the Weekly Standard Thursday, December 1, 1904. THE PETROVNA APPEAL CASE.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Volume XIII, Issue 769, 1 December 1904, Page 6

Sporting and Dramatic REVIEW AND Licensed Victuallers’ Gazette. With which is incorporated the Weekly Standard Thursday, December 1, 1904. THE PETROVNA APPEAL CASE.

The appeal of Mr James Jeffs, the owner of Petrovna, against the decision of the Canterbury Jockey Club disallowing his claim to the stakes in the Criterion Handicap run on November 9, 1903, has been heard by the judges, Messrs 0. Samuel, E. Mitchelson, and E. W Alison, and their verdict has been to allow the appeal and reverse the decision of the stewards and committee of the C.J.C. It is difficult to imagine how any other step could have been taken, and the verdict in favour of Mr Jeffs was fully anticipated before it was made public. In fact, it is exceedingly doubtful whether the big Southern club really considered that Mr Jeffs should have lost the stakes, but rather intended their finding in the case to be a reply to a previous verdict given against them by the Conference judges in the Bagpipes case, a veidict, by the way. with which a very great number of racing men entirely disagree, and which in our opinion was as far from being good racing law as it was from equity It is inconceivable, however, that Mr Jeffs should be made to suffer on this account True, he did not in his entry state the age of Petrovna, nor did he do so in any of his other entries for the same meeting, but even the stewards of the C.J.C. in the decision appealed against admit that entries have been accepted everywhere without being accompanied by the information required by the rules Under Huie 48 such an entry is invalid, but Rule 51 seems in a great measure to stultify this, and such being the case we must to a considerable degree be guided by custom. The judges in their finding state that the stewards of the Canterbury Jockey Club entirely misconceived the effect of the judgments in the Gladsome and Bagpipes cases when they viewed them as laying down a general principle that the rules must be interpreted liter ally, regardless of what the general custom has been in the past. The Canterbury Club, however, it must not be forgotten, were originally of the opinion that custom was the best guide, but had to bow to the opinion of the Court of Appeal as did the Wellington Club, and only recorded their verdict against Mr Jeffs by way of protest The whole secret of the trouble lies in the fact that the rules are in many cases badly framed, and are, moreover, so ambiguous th .t not two racing men aie to be found agreeing as to what they really mean. They should be revised with the least possible delay, for at present they are not only frequently

misleading, but are liable to cause great injustice to owners, such as was the casewith Mr Reid, who was mulcted in a heavy penalty, not through any wilful fault of his own, but by reason of the fact that not even the officers of the Conference were able to correctly interpret their own rules We are in entire accord with the judges in the Petrovna appeal case, because they allowed commonsense to triumph over technicality, and at the same time regret the fact that a similar course was not pursued when dealing with the original protests, the cause of all the trouble.