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aught I know be a profitable undertaking:
it is in any event
more profitable than having the company's ships laid up in harbour or forcibly seized by the Japanese forces. It is clear however from Mr. T. F. Lo's affidavit that these activities of the company are by Chinese law illegal, in fact treasonable, and I have not been referred to any authority for the proposition that, in order to meet the wishes of a majority of shareholders I should connive at and in fact facilitate high treason by subjects of a friendly power.
Mr. D'Almada who followed Mr. Sheldon has advanced another argument. Assuming every argument put forward by Mr. Potter Mr. D'Alamada submits that the true remedy is not a winding up order but an injunction to restrain the local branch from doing illegal acts. That submission seems to me to disregard two facts firstly, that the company has been wound up in China and that we are concerned here only with a branch, and secondly, that the company having no representatives here except a Japanese corporation whose contract of agency is illegal by the laws of China, there is no one on whom an injunction could be served.
Having come to the conclusion which I have already reached on Mr. Potter's first ground it is not strictly necessary for me to state my views on the second and third grounds, but in case on appeal the Full Court holds that the first ground fails it will obviate the necessity for a rehearsing de novo if I record that in my judgment the petition is one which should be granted on all the three grounds advanced.
· There will be an order for the winding up of the branch of the company within the jurisdiction of this Court. There will be liberty to apply and the costs of the petitioners will be paid from the local assets of the company.
(sd.) A. D. A. MacGregor
;
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Chief Justice,
21st July, 1939.