Union official agrees to judge-alone hearing

Press, 29 August 1984, Page 47

Union official agrees to judge-alone hearing

PA Wellington A defamation action by a Taranaki union official claiming $750,000 damages will probably now be heard by a judge alone. An appeal by the official, Leonard Raymond Potroz, in the court of Appeal, was short-circuited when the parties told the Court that they were content to agree that the case could be heard before a High Court judge without a jury. Counsel for Mr Potroz told the Court that he was prepared to accept that if the case was to be heard by a judge alone, the venue would have to be New Plymouth. Mr Potroz is suing seven parties, including Federated Farmers and Taranaki Newspapers, for $750,000 for defamation, and had wanted his case heard before a Wellington jury because, he claimed, Taranaki people -were prejudiced against him. Mr Justice Ongley ruled 1983, UiatHhe ca& should be heard in New Plymouth.

Mr Potroz appealed against that decision and the case was set down for hearing in the Court of Appeal before Mr Justice Cooke (presiding), Mr Justice McMullin, and Sir Clifford Richmond.

Mr Potroz is vice-presi-dent of the West Coast branch of the Meat Workers’. Union and the president of the Taranaki Trades Council.

He claimed in his application for a change of venue that the people of Taranaki were prejudiced against him and that it was in the interests of justice that Wellington should be the forum for the trial. Soon after Mr Jervis Cleary outlined the case for the appellant, counsel for the seven respondents named in the appeal indicated to the president that they did not think that there would be any objection from their various clients to a trial by judge alone. Mr Cleary said that his client would be preparedito even go to Kaitaia if *he could be tried by a judge

The Court then briefly adjourned to allow the various counsel involved to approach their clients. Defending the case are Federated Farmers, William Robson Storey, Federated Farmers Taranaki, Douglas Martin Harvey and John Russell Boddy, the Taranaki Cooperative Dairy Company, and Taranaki Newspapers, Ltd.

Outlining the case for Mr Potroz, Mr Cleary said that on September 29, 1982, the “Daily News” of New Plymouth published a statement by Mr Boddy saying that Mr Potroz was “using (certain dairy) workers to satisfy his own ends.”

During the next months that had been taken up by Mr Harvey on behalf of Taranaki Federated Farmers, the Taranaki Dairy Company, and eventually by Mr Storey for New Zealand Federated Fanners.

The dairy company also accused Mr Potroz of intimidating scabbing workers.

The newspaper, as well as publishing all those remarks, published remarks by a fanner affected by the dispute, which was then wracking the Taranaki dairy industry, in which he blamed Mr Potroz. Mr Potroz claimed the people of Taranaki were prejudiced against him. In the High Court the defendants argued that the trial should be in New Plymouth on the ground of convenience.

Mr Potroz opposed that but even if it were accepted by the Court he contended that the prejudice against him in Taranaki was so great that the trial had to be elsewhere, Mr Cleary said.

It was at that stage that the parties adjourned to consider whether their clients would be happy for the matter to be heard by a judge alone. The Court then adjourned the matter for a month to enable counsel to prepare papers on the attitudes of their Clients on the judge alone issue.