The Gazette 1961 - 64

Ireland intended, without clear words, to reverse a practically universal rule of private international law. His Lordship could find nothing in article 41 to suggest that the Courts, in the absence of further legislation, were entitled to do otherwise than regard as valid and effectual a divorce granted by the Courts of a foreign country where the parties were domiciled in that country. His Lordship therefore found that the law of Eire recognised the validity of the decree of dissolution pronounced by the English High Court, dissolving the marriage between the husband and his first wife, and also recognised the validity of the marriage celebrated in Eire between him and the petitioner. The petition therefore failed and must be dismissed.— The Times, zyth June, 1961. Charitable purposes—benefit to section of community— public element. The members of a trade union, though they include most of those in their industry, are not a section of the community for the purpose ofmaking a trust for them charitable. Under a trust deed the trustees were to provide for members of a trade union, which had as members most of those working in the printing industry, a convalescent home, and a home for poor and aged members. Held, that the trusts as they stood were not charitable because the convalescent home was not provided for a section of the community, but that the deed was an imperfect trust provision which was validated for the period since 3oth July, 1954, on terms that the convalescent home be used only for poor members : Re Mead's Trust Deed; Briginshaw v. National Society of Operative Printers and Assistants, 105 S.J. 569 ; (1961) 2 All E.R. 836, Cross J. (applying observations of Lord Simonds in Oppenheim v. Tobacco Securities Trust Co. (1951) C.L.C. 1129 and considering Re Wykes (1961) 2 C.L. 28). Misprision of felony—ingredients of offence. Misprision of felony is an indictable misdemeanour which is committed by one who, knowing that a felony has been committed, and having a reasonable opportunity to disclose his knowledge, does not inform the police or other proper authority of all material facts known to him. It is neither an element of the offence that the concealment should be for the benefit of the accused nor that it should consist in a positive. Per Lord Denning : Non-disclosure may be due to a claim of right in good faith. Quaere, whether the offence comprehends the concealment of a contemplated felony. S., knowing that certain persons had stolen firearms from a U.S.A.F. station in Norfolk, did not 37

There was no question of any defect in the form of the marriage ceremony under Irish Law. Nor was it suggested that either the wife or the registrar who performed the ceremony were deceived in any way as to the status of the husband. The wife was well-aware of the husband's earlier marriage and of its dissolution in England; the husband was described in the marriage certificate as " divorced ". The wife based her case on the provisions of article 41 of the 1937 Constitution of Ireland, Section 3, subsection 3 of which provided "No person whose marriage has been dissolved under the civil law of any other State but is a subsisting valid marriage under the law for the time being in force within the jurisdiction of the Government and Parliament established by this Constitution shall be capable of contracting a valid marriage within that jurisdiction during the lifetime of the other party to the marriage so dissolved." In Mayo-Perrott v. Mayo Perrott (1958) I.R. 336 the plaintiff, who had been the successful petitioner in this Court for dissolution of her marriage, sued in the High Court of Ireland for the unpaid balance of costs awarded to her in the suit. It was held by Mr. Justice Murnaghan, at first instance, and affirmed by the Supreme Court on appeal, that the order for costs could not be severed from the substantive order for divorce and could not be enforced in Eire, being repugnant to Eire's policy on divorce. In the Supreme Court two of the Judges, Chief Justice Maguire and Mr. Justice Kingsmill Moore, con sidered the question whether or not the English decree of divorce would be recognised by the Irish Courts as valid to dissolve the marriage, and their views differed completely. The Chief Justice said that subsection 3 said as plainly as it could be said that a marriage dissolved under the law of another state remained in the eyes of the law of Eire a subsisting valid marriage. His Lordship differed with obvious hesitation from the Chief Justice in this construction of the Irish Constitution, but his Lordship did not understand the subsection to say, plainly or at all, that a marriage dissolved by the Court of another State remained in the eyes of the law of Eire a subsisting valid marriage. As Mr. Justice Kingsmill Moore pointed out, no doubt the Oireachtas could pass a law that no dissolution of marriage wherever affected, even where the parties were domiciled in the country of the Court pronouncing the decree, was to be effective to dissolve the pre-existing marriage. But it had not done so, and the law existing when the Constitution was passed was that a divorce effected by a foreign Court of persons domiciled within its jurisdiction was valid in Ireland. It was highly unlikely that the Constitution of