SUPREME COURT DECISION RESERVED ON LIBEL APPEAL

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30626, 17 December 1964, Page 27

SUPREME COURT DECISION RESERVED ON LIBEL APPEAL

Mr Justice Wilson in the Supreme Court yesterday reserved his decision on an appeal by John Campbell Montgomery, a farmer, against his conviction and a fine of £25 on a charge of criminal libel brought in the Magistrate’s Court by Henry William Fawcett, a noxious weeds inspector. A letter Montgomery wrote to the Heathcote County Council was the cause of the action. Fawcett said the letter accused him of having given perjured evidence during proceedings he took against Montgomery. Montgomery, on the other hand, claimed the letter said no more than that incorrect evidence was given. Mr P. T. Mahon, for Montgomery, said that no deliberate untruth had ever been alleged, and though Montgomery agreed that the last paragraph might have been less strong he was adamant in saying that incorrect evidence was given in the proceedings Fawcett took against him. Judge’s Suggestion

His Honour then suggested that the parties to the action should get together and agree that there had been an honest misunderstanding. He said he would take an adjournment so the parties could have discussions with a view to allowing the appeal by consent.

On the resumption, Mr J. F. Burn, for Fawcett, said that Fawcett did not agree with Montgomery’s view of the evidence in many respects, and Fawcett would not concede that he might have been mistaken. Mr Mahon said the offence was an unusual one, and what made it more so was that he did not think there was a record of any person having been convicted of the offence because of a letter he had written to another’s employer. The appellant and the respondent had once apparently been on good terms. Montgomery once had been

Fawcett’s employer, and he had supported Fawcett’s application for a position as noxious weeds inspector. Montgomery received three notices concerning noxious weeds, and then a summons. The case was taken to Court, and Montgomery was given time to carry out the necessary work. He was not represented. Montgomery said at the time he had thought he had done the necessary work, and, during a court adjournment he had written to the Heathcote County Council with two complaints. He was not making an accusation but was writing asking whether he could attend a hearing of his complaint in terms which it was difficult to say expressed malice, said Mr Mahon. He told the council that during the court hearing on May 14 Fawcett said the only spraying was along the boundaries bordering the road frontage. This, he wrote, was not so, and he claimed he had sprayed an interior area and the corners of the boundaries and that he had called an expert to say the area had been autumn sprayed.

There was no doubt that Fawcett had tried to convey to the Magistrate that only the road boundaries had been sprayed, while Montgomery was perfectly contented in saying that which he had always said—that this was a mistake by Fawcett made through carelessness ,said Mr Mahon. “Fought Right Through” Mr Burn said that the defence had largely been a criticism of the methods Fawcett and the council used, and the present issue was not one where a man made a statement, perhaps genuinely, and was then upset to find a different meaning had been taken from it than that which he had intended.

A man in that position would have done something to have the matter put right, but Montgomery had fought his issue right through, and till yesterday there had been no suggestion of a mistake or a retraction. A background involving allegations of falsehoods before a court was a factor in establishing malice, said Mr Burn.