(Jewish Telegraphic Agency)
The claim of the Greek engineer. M. Mavrommatis, for £217.000 damages alleged to have been caused through the British government’s delay in the approval of his plans for the Jerusalem electrification concession which he held under a grant of the Ottoman government, failed today.
The Permanent Court of International Justice, by a vote of seven to four, upheld the objection taken by the British Government to the international court’s jurisdiction to hear the Greek Government’s claim against Great Britain for a violation of international obligation.
Sir Douglas Hogg in arguing the case before the court for the British Government, presented the contention that there might have been a breach of contract, but in no case was there a breach of international obligation. Consequently, the Courts of Palestine alone had jurisdiction. “Even admitting for the sake of argument,” he said, “that it was a question of a breach of international obligation, that breach would not be one committed in the exercise of the powers of public control provided for in Article II of the Mandate, and that was the only case in which the Court was given jurisdiction.”
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
