ARMSTRONG V. CAPPER

7103/51

4. J Gourley, Gort, Print, Merb

rN H

IN THE HIGH COURT OF AUSTRALIA 4 i

vd

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REASONS FOR JUDGMENT

Judgment delivered at. Sydney on__Tuesday, 9th November, 1954

JUDGMENT (ORAL)

ARMSTRONG ve CAPPER

DIXON C.J. McTLERNAN J. FULLAGAR J. KITTO J. TAYLOR J.

ARMSTRONG ve __ CAPPER

This is an appeal from a decree of McLeliand J. granting specific performance of an agreement for the sale and purchase of land. The suit was a vendor's suit. The plaintiff, the vendor, is the owner of a residence upon an area of one acre, one rood, eighteen and a half perches, in Bowral. It consists of three allot- ments and/apparently known as "Tait's" block. It mpears that the plaintiff was desirous of selling his residence and he placed it in the hands of an agent named Walker. This he did somewhere at the beginning of 1951. At the end of March 1951 the defendant met

Walker and spent a little time in his company. The defendant apparently had been addicted to alcohol and had undergone some treatment which had terminated some little time before. While his alcoholism was a little better he was not entirely free from it. Walker had him to stay with him at his house for some few days at the end of March and the beginning of April. At that time it does not appear that he was drinking very heavily. He took him to see the plaintiff's house and apparently the defendant expressed his desire to buy such a residence. There was a very cursory inspection of the place but the three men, the plaintiff, the defendant and Walker, afterwards met. They were at Picton Show- ground on what appears to be Saturday, 7th April. On that day a document was drawn up and was signed by both Armstrong the defendant, and Capper, the plaintiff. In the first place the document was given the date Saturday, 6th April 1951, but in somewhat irregular figures the cerrect date of the seventh of the fourth month 1951 was added. It was a Saturday. The document expresses in a very rough and crude way an agreement for the sale of the property for the sum of £13,500. On the same day a cheque was given by the defendant for a deposit of £1,350. It is that