JURISDICTION DECLINED

Press, Volume XCV, Issue 28234, 23 March 1957, Page 12

JURISDICTION DECLINED

Perjury At Inquest Alleged

(New Zealand Press Association) AUCKLAND, March 22. The Auckland Coroner, Mr A. Addison, refused today to decide whether perjury had been committed during evidence given during the second inquest into the death of Barrie Montgomery James Ford. “An inquest is not a criminal or civil trial,” he said. “The question of perjury is unnecessary in this particular case for the purposes of my finding. I leave it, with any attendant liability, to be decided in other appropriate proceedings.” Mr Addison found that Ford died on July 11, 1954. on the main highway near Te Hana through inter-cranial and cervical spina] cord damage as a result of a motor-cycle, upon which he and James Alex Western were travelling, colliding with a car. A previous finding by the Wellsford Coroner, Mr W. J. Dell, was quashed on August 9, 1956, after a motibh by the deceased's mother, Mrs J. N. Ford, had been heard in the Supreme Court, Auckland. Mrs Ford claims that her son was not the driver but the pillion passenger of the motor-cycle. Last week counsel for Mrs Ford, Mr H. G. W. Bagley, alleged before Mr Addison that perjury had been committed and that the police had connived at preparing, in secret, a deposition which committed the same irregularity as that on which the quashing of the previous finding was based.

“Mr Bagley invited me to decide who was the driver of the motor-cycle at the time of the collision,” said Mr Addison. “In the course of the evidence it appears that this point has become almost an issue between the parties. Coroner’s Function “I do not think that in this case it is necessary for me to decide this point in returning an appropriate finding. It is clearly established that a motor-cycle carrying deceased and a companion was involved in a collision with a car and, as a result of the collision, Ford was killed. “An inquest is not the proper occasion to try or consider questions of negligence or criminal liability—there are no parties to inquest proceedings, the rules of evidence are relaxed, and the jurisdiction of the Coroner is limited to an investigation of the' facts of when, where, and how the death occurred. “In view of counsel’s assertion as to perjury and in view of the fact that liability, whether civil or criminal,-may well depend on decision on the point as to who was the actual driver; I deem it oroper in this particular case to leave that point unanswered, it being unnecessary for the purposes of my finding.” After the Coroner had given his finding, Mr Bagley commented to the Court: “Then the whole question is at large again.”