Farmer Held To Have Right To Appeal

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30625, 16 December 1964, Page 9

Farmer Held To Have Right To Appeal

The appellant, Alfred Lawrence Lee, a farmer, of Greenpark, had the night to appeal to the Supreme Court from decisions of the North Canterbury Land Settlement Committee, acting as agent for the Land Settlement Board, Mr Justice Wilson said in a reserved decision in the Supreme Court yesterday. Mr J. G. Leggat, with him Mr H. J. B. Quigley, appeared for Lee, and Dr. I. L. M. Richardson appeared for the Land Settlement Board. His Honour said that the board challenged Lee’s right of appeal, and by consent that question was argued before him as a preliminary to the hearing of the merits of the appeal. Lee was lessee of part of a section of Crown Land which was originally reserved for the Lincoln-Little River railway. He used the land for farming in conjunction with other land he owned in Ridge road across from the railway land.

On February 20, 1963, Lee learned that the Crown meant to dispose of some 20 acres of the railway land, 17 acres of which was the land over which he held the lease. He gave notice of his desire to purchase the land that day. On the same day, one Watson, who owned land on the opposite side of the area but also separated from it by a road, also gave notice of his desire to purchase part of the 20 acres which was opposite his land. At later dates one Eden, and one Jones, gave notice of their desire to pur-

chase the other parts of the 20 acres opposite their respective properties, but which were also separated from it by a public road. None of. the applicants' lands, therefore, were contiguous with the areas they sought to purchase. All four applications were heard by the North Canterbury Land Settlement Committee on June 11, 1963, in the presence of the applicants or their counsel or both. On June 20, 1963, the appellant’s solicitor was informed by letter from the committee that it had decided to permit him to retain the area for a further two winters and that the lease he held would be terminated on October 31, 1964. This “remarkably uninformative” document, his Honour thought, implied that the appellant’s application to purchase had been rejected, and the resolution of the committee passed at its meeting on June 11, although equally vague, implied the same.

“The committee is recorded as having resolved (a) that Mr Lee’s lease be terminated as at October 31, 1964, and (b) that Messrs Watson and Jones and Pyne, Gould, Guinness Ltd., be given the opportunity to apply for the areas adjacent to their properties. Pyne, Gould, Guinness Ltd., owns as trustee about 19 acres of land adjacent to the area which Eden sought to purchase but on the opposite side of Ridge road. This company’s property is for a few chains contiguous with that area, but is otherwise separated from it by another public road,” his Honour said.