Judgement

Appeal from a judgment of the Court of Appeal of the Supreme Court of the Straits Settlements (March 2, 1915) affirming the judgment at the trial.

The respondent sued the appellant in the Supreme Court of the Straits Settlements (Penang) to recover the principal and interest due under mortgages executed by the appellant in 1912 and 1913. The appellant pleaded that he was an infant at the time when he executed the mortgages. The respondent by his reply joined issue, and pleaded further that he was induced to lend upon the mortgages by the fraudulent misrepresentation of the appellant that he was then of age, and that if he was in fact then an infant the amount claimed was recoverable as damages. At the trial before Sercombe-Smith J. the appellants brother proved an entry in a book kept by the deceased father of the appellant and containing records of the births, deaths, and marriages of his family; this entry recorded that the appellant was born on September 17, 1895, according to which date he was between seventeen and eighteen when the mortgages were executed. There was no other evidence to establish the age of the appellant. The witness stated that the entry did not com