Jasper County Democrat, Volume 22, Number 20, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 June 1919 — FOUND GUILTY AND FINED $50 [ARTICLE]

FOUND GUILTY AND FINED $50

On One of Newland Eviction Cases Tried in Newton. (Herman J. Huppers, foreman for the Jasper County Farms Co., an alleged offspring of Ed Oliver, was found guilty of assault and battery on the person of Albert H. Grimm by a Jury in the Newton circuit court Wednesday and was fined SSO and costs. M. Leopold of Rensselaer assisted the state in the prosecution of the case. This was one of about a dozen cases filed against Mr. Kuppers, Ed Oliver et al, growing out of the recent high-handed eviction of Robert H. Grimm from a house he occupied near Newland, in Jasper county, on lands alleged to belong to this land company or Ollier, but which a relative of Grimm had a contract |o purchase, as told in - *B eurocrat at the time. The cases first filed here were taken to Newton on change, of venue, and the above case is the only one tried thus far, the others pending there having been continued for the term. Several other cases, filed later, are still pending in this county, all growing out of the throwing of Grimta and his household effects out of the house without any process of law whatever. Mr. Kuppers was an officer in the recent world war and is said to be a fine fellow, but he evidently went a little too far in obeying the orders of his employers, who are alleged to have sent a couple of strong-arm thugs down from Chicago who represented themselves as officers, to throw Grimm out of the house. If these 'men were officers they had no license to use their unique methods in Indiana, and they are said to have "beat it” mighty quickly, with Oliver, back to Chicago, when they learned that the sheriff of Jasper county was on his way out to arrest the entire bunch of them, driving to Lowell or Crown Point to take the train rather than take any chances on coming to Rensselaer. Grimm’s furniture was badly broken u H in the eviction, it is said, and he was quite badly beaten up in resisting the strong-arm bunch who threw him out. Such methods may work in some sections of the old world, where we read of the evictions of tenants in this manner, but the people of this section of Indiana are partly civilized at least, and tjiey prefer to see legal methods used in such cases.