Lord Buckmaster:-

This is an appeal from an order of the full Court of His Britannic Majesty's Supreme Court for China siting at Shanghai, refusing the appellants' application for the new trial of an action heard by the Chief Judge, Sir Havilland de Sausmarez, on 7th July, 1916, and decided in favour of the respondents.

An appeal was originally instituted against the judgment itself, but this was abandoned in favour of the attempt to obtain a new trial. The appellants were well advised in the course they thus took. The difficulties that beset the hearing of the action were not of a nature that could be resolved better before their Lordships than they were before the learned Judge who tried the case. No question of law whatever was involved in the issue; the conclusion depended upon the determination of claims of contending witnesses and the balance of commercial probabilities, weighed with the knowledge of local habits and local manners.

The soundness of the judgment on the material originally before the learned Judge is therefore no longer in controversy; but, none-the-less, it is essential for the determination of this appeal that there should be some examination of the facts leadi