COMPLICATED LAND DISPUTE.

Evening Post, Volume LXXVII, Issue 93, 21 April 1909, Page 2

COMPLICATED LAND DISPUTE.

Yesterday the Court of Appeal was concerned with a very complicated case in connection with the lease of certain native land— the Tutira block of 20,490 acres — on the Wairoa-Napier-road. Jt was an appeal case against the judgment of Mr. Justice Cooper on 19th December, 1908, in refusing to grant a writ of prohibition on behalf of Te Roera Tareha and other natives against the Ikaroa Land Board in granting the lease of the Tutira black, on the ground that defendant had had no jurisdiction to execute leases on that block. For the appellants, Mr Skerrett said the question at issue was whether the statute forceel the' native owners to lease their lands to certain specified Europeans on terms fixed by the commission, or whether the section was not merely satutoiy authority to the board to execute the leases as agent for, raid on behalf of, the native owners. He submitted that the statute did not bind the classes to accept the lease, nor were they bound by any contract to accept the leases in terms of the statute. The result, therefoie, was that the statute, if it were compulsory, could only be exercised effectively at the instigation of the lessees, because they were neither found by the statute nor by contract to accept the lease. Argument was continued this morning.