Page image
Page image

I—7

36

ment has no desire to enter into a discussion as to the reasons which have led to the postponement on your part. In reply to your statement that the Government retain in their service many of the staff engaged during the construction of the railways, while you have suffered by the death of Mr. Henderson, your principal witness, and have been obliged, at great expense, to keep your other witnesses together, I am to remind you that the principal witness for the Government, Mr. Carruthers, is no longer in the Government service, and has left the colony; while your firm last year endeavoured to obtain the professional services of Mr. Higginson, a witness for the Government, second only in importance to Mr. Carruthers, and have now in your employment, as the Minister is informed, others who have formerly held positions in the Government service. To your statement that your firm Las always been demanding and urging an inquiry, I am to reply this is hardly consistent with the fact that from 1878 to 1881 nothing whatever was done by you, while you rejected the offers of the Government in 1877 to submit the matter in dispute for investigation and settlement in the manner provided by your contracts. To your statement that notices to arbitrate were served by you in January, 1877, and that the Government were then asked to acknowledge that the notices were proper, but they refused to accept them as in order, and never intimated their willingness to waive the limitation of six months, I am to reply that you write under a strange misconception as to what really occurred in the year 1877. On the 21st December, 187(5, your firm, through your representative here, Mr. Henderson, delivered four notices to arbitrate upon your claims under the Waitara, Invercargill, Napier, and Picton Contracts. The notices were in form, and probably in effect, erroneous, because they were not in the form of a statement as provided by the Act of 1872. My letter to you of the 26th January, 1877, was in the following terms: "I am directed by the Hon. tiie Minister for Public Works to acknowledge the receipt of your four letters of the 21st December, severally giving notice of a dispute having arisen in respect of the contract entered into by Messrs. Brogden and Sons as regards the railways therein mentioned, the four railways being the Picton and Blenheim, the ISTapier and Pakipaki, the Waitara and New Plymouth, and the Invercargill and Mataura. The Minister intended to have deferred acknowledging the receipt of your letters as above until he was in a position to have gone fully and finallv into the matter in dispute ; but, after giving them such consideration as he is able, the Minister instructs me to inform you that ho finds some of the matters in dispute cannot finallv be fully investigated during the absence of the Engineer-in-Chief. On that officer's return, now shortly expected, a definite reply shall, however, be sent to you. Meanwhile, I am to state that it is not intended by this acknowledgment to waive any irregularity in the terms or form of the various notices you have given, nor to waive any right or privilege vested in or accorded to the Government or the Minister for Public Works under "The Government Contractors Arbitration Act, 1872." The last clause of this letter may possibly be referred to and relied on by you as proving that, from the very first, the Government notified their intention to set up the bar of the time-limit prescribed by section 31. It can be proved that the Government of the day had no such intention, and that the general reference to the provisions of the Act was rendered necessary by your apparent endeavours to ignore them. Upon receipt of the letter Mr. Travers called upon the Solicitor-General, and the result of the interview was that Mr. Travers wrote the following (addressed to the SolicitorGeneral), 31st January, 1877 :— "With reference to the conversation between us at our yesterday's interview with respect to the claims of the Messrs. Brogden against the Government, I now beg to put in writing the course which 1 think would be most satisfactory to both parties, in the hope that it may meet the approval of the Government. Assuming that the Government will treat the existing notices as a sufficient compliance with the Act, Messrs. Brogden will at once file in the Court here their claim in respect of the NapierPakipaki line, with the propositions of law and fact in support of it. The Government will then file any counter-propositions. Before the Court is asked to appoint a day for hearing the matter, Mr. Henderson will be willing to meet the Engineer-in-Chief, and go through the claim for the purpose of eliminating all items in respect of which no dispute exists; or Mr. Henderson will meet Mr. Carruthers before the claim is filed, for the purpose of reducing it to the actual elements in dispute. When the latter have been ascertained by either of the above courses, issues could, with the sanction of the Judge, be drawn by you and myself, so as to raise all the questions involved in the dispute; and the decision of his Honor on these questions would guide both parties in regard to similar questions arising out of the other cases, either party being at liberty, however, to treat such questions as still open with respect to other lines. It is not my wish, acting for the Messrs. Brogden, to pursue these investigations in any spirit of hostility towards the Government, or in a manner likely to embarrass or inconvenience them ; and I trust that the Government, on their part, will consent to carry on the proceedings with as much freedom from technical difficulties as may be consistent with their duty ; I, on the part of the Messrs. Brogden, being quite willing to waive technical points in the course of the proceedings. I should be glad to have your views upon the above at your early convenience, this letter being, of course, without prejudice." To the proposals thus made by your firm the Government agreed, as appears by Mr. Reid's letter to Mr. Travers of the 14th February, 1877, which was as follows : — " I have the honor to acknowledge receipt of your letter of the 31st ultimo, respecting the submission to arbitration of Messrs. Brogden's claims against the Government, and, in reply, to inform vou that the Government are prepared to adopt the course indicated in the letter above referred to. I think it will be more convenient that Mr. Henderson should meet the Engineer-in-Chief and settle the items in dispute before the claim is filed ; and these gentlemen can arrange accordingly." Preparations were made by the Government for immediate proceedings upon the basis thus agreed upon, and it was understood that the claims were to be finally investigated and disposed of, when you chose to repudiate the above arrangement, and wrote the letter of the Bth March, 1877. Of the nature and effect of that letter you are well aware ; and I am to point out to you that it was by the act of your firm, and not by any act of the Government, that a judicial investigation and final

Log in or create a Papers Past website account

Use your Papers Past website account to correct newspaper text.

By creating and using this account you agree to our terms of use.

Log in with RealMe®

If you’ve used a RealMe login somewhere else, you can use it here too. If you don’t already have a username and password, just click Log in and you can choose to create one.


Log in again to continue your work

Your session has expired.

Log in again with RealMe®


Alert