THE MILLS LIBEL ACTIONS. THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES REFUSED A NEW TRIAL.

Evening Post, Volume LV, Issue 124, 27 May 1898, Page 6

THE MILLS LIBEL ACTIONS. THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES REFUSED A NEW TRIAL.

The Chief Justice this morning delivered the judgment of himself ami Mr. Justice Edwards on the motion by the Otago Daily Times Newspaper Company, for a new trial of the libel action brought against it by Mr. C. H. Mills, M.H.R. The ground of the application was the improper rejection of evidence. The libel appeared in the Otago Witness, in the form of a reprinted article from theManawatu Standard, and related to alleged improper conduct on the part of Mr. Mills in obtaining the removal of Constable Jeffries f rom Picton to Takaka, Nelson, for political reasons. The jury gave a verdict in favour of the plaintilF. The Court considered that where, as here, the defendant admitted that the libel as a whole was written of the plaintiff, to permit Ihe defendant to say that the words were written of the plaintiff but there were some facts not specified as being acts or conduob of his which justified as fair comment the opinions expressed iv the words, would be contrary to the principle of the defence of fair comment. It, would be unfair to the plaintiff that the defendant should, without justifying as true any charge he had made, escape the consequence of his publication by saying when brought to trial that there was .conduct of the plaintiff which be did not mention or refer to in his article of a kind which justified his forming the bad opinion of the plaintiff expressed in the words complained of. In this instance the article did impute that the constable Mas removed for party political reasons, and it appeared capable of being understood to impute, that the plaintiff's action in regard to party politics was the cause of the removal. If the defendant wanted to prove that the constable was removed for party political reasons, such proof would admittedly have been relevant if the defendant had accepted the position that be meant to ask the jury to conclude that the plaintiff's action was the cause of that removal on such grounds. If, however, the defendant at the time the evidence was tendered shrank from that, the evidence was, the Court thought, inadmissible on any of the purposes for which itt was t^dered. Counsel for the defendant iv effect admitted, when the evidence was tendered, that he was unable to prove a connection of the plaintiff with the removal on party or political grounds, aud that being so, the evidence was properly rejected as evidence of a fa"co itself irrelevant. The Court thought the evidence was, under the circumstances in which it was tendered, properly rejected whether for the purpos.es of the defence of fair comment, justification on the ground of truth, or mitigation of damages. It was unnecessary, therefore, to consider the objection as to tha mode of proof. The motion for a new trial was therefore dismissed, with £10 10s costs and disbursements.