SUPREME COURT Three Appeals Heard

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31627, 13 March 1968, Page 10

SUPREME COURT Three Appeals Heard

Of three appeals heard by Mr Justice Wilson in the Supreme Court yesterday, decision was reserved on one, and the two others were dismissed, one of them on the appellant’s own application. An appeal by Norman Ralph Turner, a greenkeeper (Mr D. H. Stringer), against conviction for driving under the influence of drink or drugs—on which his Honour reserved decision—was partbased on a contention that the magistrate’s “unhesitating” dismissal of a related charge of dangerous driving was, in effect, a finding that the appellant had had proper control of his vehicle. In addition, said Mr Stringer, Turner was a man of such peculiar personal characteristics possessing slurred speech and rolling gait—that an experienced police doctor had been misled by his appearance. It would be difficult, submitted Mr Stringer, to have proved the appellant’s alleged unfitness to drive without blood or urine tests, especially when the evidence disclosed that Turner had done nothing untoward in his driving. Mr C. M. Roper, for the Crown, said that the appellant’s driving had been sufficient to attract attention, and that his mere driving while under observation was not the end of the matter. “Special Reason” The fact that Murray Charles Tavendale, a butcher (Mr A. P. C. Tipping), had believed he was answering an urgent call home because his father had taken ill was advanced, on appeal, as a “special reason” why a magistrate should not have imposed a year’s disqualification on Tavendale when convicted of driving in Waltham Road at a speed which might have been dangerous. Mr Tipping argued that the magistrate should have accepted the facts outlined as a “special reason”—instead of rejecting it—and thus exercised a discretion in Tavendale’s favour to impose less than the mandatory term of disqualification. His Honour, after lengthy argument, said he was clear that the appeal must be dismissed, but as he “arrived at

the conclusion by a different route’ than that of the magistrate, said he would give a decision in writing later. Mr A. Hearn, in opposing the appeal for the Christchurch City Council traffic department, had argued against acceptance of the facts in Tavendale’s case as a “special reason,” saying that to do so would “open the door to all sorts of excuses” to the charge of driving at potentially dangerou? speed. Appeal Dismissed

An appeal by Henry George Hird, retired (Mr W. A. Wilson) —said to be now an inmate of a mental hospital—against sentence imposed on a charge of being found drunk in a public place, was dismissed, on the appellant’s own application.