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121
False Warranties.
These are dealt with in Section 20 (Sub-section 6) of the Sale
of Food and Drugs Act, 1899, as follows:—
Every person who in respect of an article of food or drug sold
by him as principal or agent gives to the purchaser a false warranty
in writing shall be liable on summary conviction to various
penalties unless be proves to the satisfaction of the court that
when he gave the warranty he had reason to believe that the statements
or descriptions contained therein were true.
There have been three prosecutions for a false warranty in
Finsbury—there were convictions in all cases.
The circumstances were these:-
1. The warrantor produced in evidence a churn ticket whose
number had obviously been altered so as to make it appear that
the warranty applied to a churn other than the actual one.
The falsification was discovered by visiting the farmer who
supplied the warrantor from Derbyshire. This farmer kept very
accurate records of the movements and destinations of all his
churns, which were daily checked and recorded.
2. The magistrate did not believe the evidence of the warrantor,
and made a statement to that effect in court.
3. The milk vendor stated that the milk supplied was from a
churn numbered (X), for which he held a warranty. Two
visits were made to Horsmonden, Kent, and it was discovered
that, on the date that the sample was taken, that churn (X) had
been sent elsewhere, and not to the milk vendor implicated.
It will be gathered that these prosecutions for giving false
warranties are, as a rule, very difficult to sustain.
The witnesses from whom the inculpating evidence is sought
to be extracted, namely, the warrantor and warrantee, may be,
and generally are, from the first hostile to the Borough Council,
and, therefore, disinclined to open out.