ESERVED judgment was given by Mr. Justice Bennett in the Chancery Division, London, dismissing the claim and counterclaim in which Mrs. Elsy Florence Eva Borders, the wife of a taxicab driver, conducted her case against a building society in person and became known as "the Tenants' K.C." The case raised questions of importance to house purchasers and building societies and the hearing lasted 18 days. The public gallery in the court was packed and hundreds were unable to get in.
Bradford Third Equitable Building Society claimed possession of Mrs. Borders' house in Kingsway on the Coneyhall Estate, West Wickham, Kent, on the ground that at the date of the issue of the writ she was three months in arrear with her mortgage payments.
Mrs. Borders counter-claimed £500 for alleged misrepresentation of the value of the house. The amount advanced by the building society was £693, carrying interest of five per cent. per annum. truth. They could not have been making a mistake.
The question was whether they were telling the truth. They were unshaken in cross-examination, and there was nothing to show that their evidence was not to be believed.
On the whole, he said, he regarded them as truthful witnesses and Mr. Feldmar as an untrustworthy and unreliable person, who had had an active part in a business that was fundamentally dishonest, namely, that carried on by Morrells, the builders.
"Jerry-Built" Allegation She denied being in arrear, alleged that the house was built and unfit for habitation.
An undertaking was given to her, she said, that the mortgage would not be enforced until the defects in the house were remedied, and she made her first payments "under protest and without prejudice" to her rights. She also asserted that the mortgage sued upon was not the document executed by her.
Mrs. Borders challenged the validity of the mortgage transaction. She said that the society not only took a charge on the security of the house, but also upon collateral security provided by the builders from whom she purchased the house.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.