Land for New Road: Industrial Development Mr. E. S. Cunningham (President), Mr. 8. "Barton and Mr. N. Aall, sitting on Tuesday in the U.S. Court for China, as the Court of Consuls, Ecard the petition filed against the! Municipal Couniil by Tsai Shi-sung, the owner of 1.7 mow of land adjacent to Ferry Road, which is affected by a new road-building scheme. The petition set forth that Mapai Road, from Ferry Road to the Soochow Creek, was scheduled to ran through petitioner's property, but part of the road had been abandoned. He sought an. inj tion restraining the Coun referring the matter to the Land Commission; an injunction rostral ing the Council from trespassing on or committing dam perty; and a declars Council have no right to claim the land.
'Mr. S, H. Lewis appeared for petitioner, and Br. G. H. Wright and Mr.' J. E. Badeley for the lout scheduling lines of roads. It was highly important to arrange that new areas should not develop into slum property.
Witness could not understand why it should be contended that, because:
section of the rond was abandoned, [the whole of it should be.
Mr. Lewis was cross-examining with 'a view to showing that there! was an objection to the whole road, when Mr. Wright quoted a letter written at the time by Mr. Lewis, then assistant secretary of the Council, referring to the "eastern extremity."
Witness said every case was. con-[sidered on its merits; there was no set principle on which they came to a decision, They were largely. influenced by consideration of whether a road was in the public interest, He could not say whether the riginal idea when scheduling Mapai Road was to secure a direct line of Jaccess to Soochow Creek. He was not in Shanghai at the time.
When witness hesitated in agroeto a suggestion by Mr. Lewis, the latter said:—"You must. remem. ber that what appears in the Municipal Gazette is all the public jover knows of any Council decis-
The hearing was adjourned, The Case for Petitioner Mr. Lewis said that his case cen-fred "round two main points—whether the Council had power to demand surrender of the land and Power to invoke the aid of the Land Regulations; also, whether the! demand was justified. The evidence would be brief and it was possible the Court would be mainly concerned with legal argument, Mr. Lewis then read lengthy correspondence between the petitioner and the Council, most of it depending on an undertaking given by petitioner, when granted a permit to erect a fence on his property, that he would remove it whenever road-making required it.
Plaintiff gave evidence as to ownership and occupancy.
Cross-examined—He admitted he lied with a relative who!
id his house, but it was not because of this that he erected the fence so as to keep him out. Witness had owned the land for seven or eight years. He did ni know before he asked for the permit, that his land was scheduled or surrender, He did not object then and he would not have objected at all if the road had been pushed ight through, but he thought it] fair to build through his proerty only.
Mr. T. Wynyard Brooke, architect and surveyor, said that he had examined the iand in the neighbourhood of petitioner's property. He saw a number of boundary stones, but no signs of road-making. In the northern part. the Western District the development was largely in the way of mills, houses and shops for Chinese workpeople. It was an industrial neighbourhood or tending that wa Cross-examined—Part of Mapai Road was surrendered by his firm, 'A brother of the petitioner, whose land was adjacent to the latter's, said the Council had not demanded ithe surrender of his property.
This closed the petitioner's case.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.