At last finality appears to have been reached in a series of! cases arising out of the commandeering and disposal of the worl clip during three years of the war. Undoubtedly the pastoralists did very well, but there were many others involved. The fellmjngers, for instance, found themselves compelled to subject their wool to the general control, and did so feeling themselves morally and legally bound. Yet they now find that the profits on wool, over and above the contract price with the Imperial Government are not coming their way, and they hold that about £2,000,000 is involved. The High Court has decided that they cannot recover profits because they had no definite contract with the Central Wool Committee, which was practically the Government agency. Yet another case has taken many months, and must have cost thousands and teng of thousands of pounds. In this the Commonwealth sued a wool spin-, ning company. The amount involved was fabulous, and the amount spent was the same. In the end, the Court found that the Commonwealth had no legal power to make the contracts which it required to be fulfilled, but that the company would have to pay up war profits taxes, and pay much in costs. Doubtless there will be some more law cases to decide what's what. There was one prolonged trio] on matters of fact, and two or three other hearings before eminent judges about something.
In giving his judgment with other High Court judges,, Mr. Justice Higgins commented upon the fact that 62 pages of pleadings were made to do duty when two or three would have been ample. He made this sarcastic remark:—"If this case should come to be considered by some other tribunal, it will probably be noted with surprise that in this court it was not until what is grotesquely called amended further pleading to amended reply and amended reply to amended defence to cross-action, that the main point was taken. After that,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.