Costly Omission of a Decimal Dot A mistake in the decoding of a cipher message, said to have been caused by the omission of a decimal point, through which the Foreign Office paid out £10,000 instead of £100, gave rise to an action in the King's Bench Division recently.
In July 1919 the Acting British Consul at Murmansk telegraphed in cipher to the Foreign Office asking that a credit of 400,000 roubles should be paid to the credit of Lieut.-Colone] Alex. Borissov, of Cromwell Road, Kensington, ' who represented the Russian Government at Vickers's, Sheffield. £10,000 Was accordingly paid into Colonel Borissov's bank, but when the documents arrived it was found that the sum should have been 4,000 roubles, equal at the rate of exchange to £100. Defendant. was written to, and he explained that) he had invested! £5,000 in a business and could mot repay it, but he repaid £4,000 and the Attomey-General now sued to recover £5,900 overlaid.
Grrr From Retative.
Mr. Justice Bray: What was the the|money to be paid for?
Mr. Henriques, x.c., for the trouble of selecting a staff of suffi-}defendant, said the colonel had. written to his relations in Russia could, and the credit was the result to send him all the money the:
of this appeal.
Mr. Leslie Sherwood said the cipher was destroyed, as were all Jeypher messages after translation. It was not known whether the mistake occurred at the cipher branch of the Foreign Office or in connexion with the message sent by the cable company.
His Lordship said defendant must have known there was some mistake, and gave judgement for the Attorney-General, with costs.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.