Volume Six - Pre-Victorian to the Present Day - Select Aspects - The Penarth Harbour, Dock & Railway Co. dispute with Messrs. Smith, Knight & Co. . .

He, however, very much regretted to say, what he had said repeatedly at previous half-yearly meetings, that he saw no source from which the £40,000 was to be realised. Unfortunately, they had had to do with insolvent contractors, and he believed that if these men had not been insolvent they would have been called upon to take possession of the works. The assets of the estate of Smith, Knight, and Co. he really believed were nothing, or at least so small that they had been spent in litigation between the estate and the Penarth Company.

He did not see his way at present to realise anything of that assumed sum of £40,000. Up to this time he believed that the trustees of the estate of Messrs. Smith, Knight, and Co. had continued this litigation with a very faint hope, or hardly any hope at all of realising anything under this award, and he was afraid that there had been other circumstances which induced them to continue it. He thought now this interlocutory award, when they worked out the figures, would shew them how utterly hopeless it was to expect to realise anything from their view of the case from this litigation, and he hoped, therefore, that this arbitration had come to an end.

They would, however, have a large amount of costs to pay, but the costs of the estate of Messrs. Smith, Knight, and Co. would be considerably greater, and even if they were allowed costs, it would form but a very small amount of the expenses they had incurred, but he hoped and trusted that these expenses would very soon cease. They had not only been costly to them, but they had been a source of great anxiety, and during the year the arbitration had been pending the costs incurred had to be met, and the sum of £6,000 annually retained in hand had been, to a very great extent, absorbed in carrying out this arbitration.

Hitherto they had been in an unfortunate position, but it was gratifying that they could see daylight at the end of this half year. He concluded by moving the adoption of the report and the statement of accounts. The Hon. G. H. W. Clive seconded the proposition which was carried unanimously. . . " Cardiff Times [019] 6th September 1873.