SUSPENDING A COUNCILLOR.

Press, Volume L, Issue 14919, 18 March 1914, Page 5

SUSPENDING A COUNCILLOR.

THE OHAKUNE CASE. (press association telegram.) WELLINGTON, March 17. Judgment was delivered by tho Chief Justice thia morning in tue case in which Alexander Herbert Wilkie, member of the Ohakuno Borough Council, applied for a writ of injunction restraining the Mayor and other members of the Ohakuno Council from preventing plaintiff attending a meeting of the Council or any other meetings, and exercising his lawful rights as councillor. After holding that the Court had jurisdiction to interfere by injunction if tho circumstances of tho caso warranted, his Honour held that the action of plaintiff brought him under the Council's by-law relating to disorder, and that tho Mayor and Council, having found ho was 'disorderly/ the Court could not interfere with their finding. Ho held, however, that neither the Mayor nor the Borough Council had power to expel or suspend a member, tho only power to impose a penalty being under Part 2 of the by-laws, and in Section 349 of tho Statute, which agreed. His Honour also held that the resolution of suspension was clearly illegal, and granted an injunction, with costs five guineas.