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EPITOME OF SSWS. ill

TEE EE ALTE OF LONDON. - :

TEE BANGER OF TAKING A PARTNER■

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TEE BANGER OF TAKING A PARTNER■ In the Vice-Chancellor's Court, on the 18th of April, the case of Mackay v. Padovini de Guise occupied the greater part of the day. This suit, which was instituted by the plaintiff for a dissolution of the partnership between himself and the defendant, revealed the extraordinary facts set forth in the Vice-Chancellor's judgment. Mr. De Gex and Mr. Mackeven appeared for the- plaintiff, and Mr. Glasse and Mr. Swanston for the defendant. The Vice-Chancellor, in giving judgment, said the plaintiff, in 1866, was engaged in carrying on business on a small scale as a glass, china, and earthenware dealer near Belgrave-square. About that time he married a lady who had resided at Paris, and who had formed an acquaintance with the defendant, Arthur Padovaiii, who called himself Count de Guise. Whether, in point of fact, he was a count, the court could not say but if the court were asked to give a private opinion, it would certainly say that he had no right whatever to style himself a count. But by the law of the country of which he professed to be a native (France), he had been convicted of swindling, and had been adjudicated a bankrupt, and until he took some step to reverse the proceedings against him in France, this court must assume that they were well founded. The defendant having come to London about March, 1866, because he could no longer stay in France, had an interview in April, 1866, with this unfortunate plaintiff. The defendant, who had winning manners and was in a superior rank of life to the plaintiff, exercised a fascinating power over the plaintiff and induced him to enter into DIrt- I nership with him for the purpose of working certain patents for making bricks. The defendant told the plaintiff that so valuable were these patents that it was probable that bricks would not be made b.y.Lily other process, and that the partnership would certainly realise a large fortune. The plaintiff had so much con- fidence in the defendant that before any agreement far a partnership was entered into lie advanced to the de- fendant £ 400 in August. But the defendant would not let him go. Such was the defendant's fascinating power that the plaintiff was finally induced to enter into partnership with, him in December. The business —if it could be called so—was carried on for about six weeks. By that time the defendant had borrowed another sum, amounting to XIOO, from the plaintiff, and had forced upon the plaintiff, who was a young man totally inexperienced in mercantile life, certain bill transactions which took away some of the assets of the concern. It was not necessary to go into the ques- tion whether these bills were forgeries or not. It was sufficient to say that one of the lamentable results to the plaintiff of entering into this partnership was that in respect of those bills he was arrested, and put in a debtors' prison. The defendant's counsel had made severe observations upon the plaintiff, but it appeared to the court that the only wrong thing which he did was to make an untrue representation respecting some goods to a firm at Leghorn, which misrepresentation the defendant himself induced him to make. The plaintiff instituted this suit for the purpose of bringing the partnership to an end, and there must be a decree for a dissolution, and an injunction to restrain the de- fendant from making use of the name of Mackay and Co. Defendant must pay the costs of the suit if they could be got from him.