HARSTON & BENNETT,
- Solicitors.
TELEPHONE, CENTRAL 4356.
TELEGRAMS, ESCHEAT, LONDON.
4. BISHOPSGATE WITHIN, LONDON.E.C.
402
Over Cord
Dollar Krevet shunch Kerew ite
LAS X
start of the
"No
I voim
KA
?
the purchase, they would now be in a position to legally enforce a claim against the Hong Kong Government for aither the land or full compensation for its value, which latter would,no doubt, on assessment, amount to a fairly large sum, as the contract price was $50,000.
My firm, however, (as can be proved by the correspondence in its possession), advised their Client s not to actually complete the purchase pending the issue of the Crown Lease, and in accordance with that advice, my firm's Clients deferred the completion.
ນ
The effect of this was, undoubt ealy, to benefit the Hong Kong Government, because all that my firm's Clients now ask for is compensation for out-of-pocket expenses and
fees and legal costs incurred.
If you adhere to your decision to allow compensation
only as from the date f the Hong Kong Colonial Secretary's
letter of July 1902, the effect will be to deprive my firm's
Clients of by far the greater portion of the compensati on
they desire, and will, in effect, penalise them for exercising
due care and caution in the matter of the purchase.
In answer to the allegation that my firm's Clients
were, as before the date of the Hong Kong Colonial Secre-
tary's letter of July 1902, purely speculative purchasers,
I respectfully submit that that is no legal, and certainly
not a sufficient moral, ground for depriving them of the
compensation to which they would otherwise be entitled,
inasmuch as they purchased under the then existing Ordi- nances (which expressly preserved to them an equitable right to one of the two alternative course above mentioned), and in the due course of events, their purchase was justi-
fied by the Land Court's decision, so as to admit an equi-
table right in them as against the Hong Kong Government,