OCR Text |
Show THE ONEIDA SUIT. It has been manifest all along that tho Oneida irrigation district swindle in Idaho was a matter for tho civil courts to deal with, so far as its civil and criminal phases wcro concerned. The ecclesiastical commission appointed appoint-ed by President Joseph F. Smith manifestly man-ifestly could deal only with the church phase of tho matter, as to Parkinson's church position and authority. If this commission found him guilty as charged, he would necessarily be dropped as stake president and possibly-bthcrwiso disciplined in his church standing. This, however,- has nothing to do' with his answering to the civil nnd criminal law for his acts, save only that if ho has swindled the people who trusted him and has made himself liable to tho criminal statutes against frajid, he would almost necessarily neces-sarily bo dropped from his church au-thorit. au-thorit. As a matter of fact, civil procedure began long beforo the church commission commis-sion was appointed. Tho case -waB to have come on for trial in Juno in tho Fifth District Court of Idaho, at Ma-lad, Ma-lad, but Judgo Richards of Boise who had been retained in the interests of the sufferers through Parkinson's swindles swin-dles iu tho irrigation ditch operations, found that tho case had not been properly prop-erly prepared, and withdrew as counsel. coun-sel. Tlicreupou Judgo Budgo dismissed the case without prejudice, especially stating that a new action could bo bo-gun bo-gun at any time by thoso in interest. This new action has now been filed in the Fifth District Court of Idaho, at Malad. We havo elsowhcro in this paper a resumo of what that complaint recites, of the judgments that aro asked, and of the offenses charged against Hart, Henderson and Parkinson. Parkin-son. Also, full text o'f tho complaint. com-plaint. These charges are very scnndal-ous scnndal-ous and very direct. It would seem impossible im-possible that any man of any sort of decency, not to say church standing, could even bo charged with such offenses; of-fenses; but thero is no doubt of tho lia- bility, in fact tho incvitablencss, that such charges would be brought against those three men, because they seem clearly to bo guilty of everything charged, and probably of even moro than is charged. Parkinson appears to have been the chiof offender so far as swindling thoso who trusted him with' thoir money in the digging of the ditch is concerned. His conduct in handling this money, in selling the bonds and misapplying tho proceeds therefrom, appears ap-pears to have been criminal and fraudulent fraud-ulent in the highest degree. But Hart is put above him in the complaint. The case as filed will bring the whole matter directly into issue, and thoro is not tho least likelihood that there will be this time any failure in the preparation prepara-tion of the case, or in tho conduct of the proceedings before the court. The matter is in excellent hnnds, and we are confident that tho outcome will bo satisfactory sat-isfactory to lovers of justice and fair dealing. . .. |