CO129-377 - Governor Sir Lugard - 1911 [5] — Page 155

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Confidential.

Sir,

Enclosure

2.

(B)

REC?

REG 2 CURTI

Chambers,

151

Supreme Court, Hongkong,

2nd. May, 1911.

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I have the honour to acknowledge Your Excel- -lency's letter of 19th. April, on the subject of the action

brought by Mr. Tatam against Mr. Howell, the Head Bailiff of

this Court, abd beg to report as follows.

2.

I do not know any case which I have tried in

which I have had greater difficulty in arriving at a conclusion, and I am convinced that no jury would have returned a unanimous

verdict. So far as the charge of fraud is concerned I did not

think it was proved. It practically resolved itself into this, that Howell got Tatam out of the Colony in order to make arrange- -ments with the Chinaman who was buying the business more satisfactorily to himself. If it had been proved satisfactorily

that Howell still had an interest in the business, it would have

been difficult to resist the conclusion that he did get Tatam out of the Colony. On the material before me however, I thought, and think still, that the case could not be put higher than this, that it was an exceedingly foolish arrangement both for himself

as well as for Tatam, and that more care ought to have been

exercised in safe-guarding Tatam's interests in what is now a

profitable concern, even though it did not have quite such a favourable appearance at the time.

3. I think it must also be taken that Howell has no

open interest in the business; but whether he receives a commis

-sion from the purchaser, the present owner, is a very difficult

question to answer. On the one hand his private Banking account,

which I personally investigated as the result of a summons under

the Evidence Ordinance, did not reveal anything which would lead me to infer that he was regularly in receipt of such commissions. On the other hand there was an extraordinary amount of evidence

with