ACQUITTAL OF WATERSIDER

Press, Volume LXXXVII, Issue 26475, 17 July 1951, Page 8

ACQUITTAL OF WATERSIDER

CROWN APPEAL HEARD

JUDGMENT RESERVED IN SUPREME COURT

(New Zealand Press Association) WELLINGTON. July 16. The police have appealed to the Supreme Court against the ■ acquittal by Mr A. A. McLachlan, S.M., of a waterside worker charged with publishing a pamphlet likely to encourage the continuance of a declared qtrike. The respondent is Leslie Allen McCann, aged 35. After hearing legal argument to-day Mr Justice Fell reserved his decision. The Magistrate, in a decision given on April 27, held that the gratuitous distribution of a pamphlet wa« not publication. In support of the appeal, Mr W. H. Cunningham said that the regulations originally made it an offence to print or publish certain matter. On May 1 the clause was amended by the addition of words whiph would prevent toe question before toe Court ever arising again. After “publishes” was added, "or distributes or delivers to the public to any person or persons or causes to be printed or published or distributed or delivered as aforesaid.” Mr Cunningham submitted that as there was nd definition in the regulations of “publishes” the intention of the Governor-General-in-Council in introducing the regulations had to be gathered from the words of the regulations themselves. The regulations were obviously intended to prevent the printing and publishing of strike pamphlets. For the respondent Mr C. H. Arndt submitted that “publishes” in the original regulations did not include the mere physical act of someone in distributirig a pamphlet, and that the addition to the regulation of the words “distributes or delivers” amounted to an adoption by the «f an interpretation of toe word “publishes” as not including toe physical act of distributing or delivering.