STATE DOCUMENTS?

Evening Post, Volume CXXII, Issue 69, 18 September 1936, Page 10

STATE DOCUMENTS?

APPEAL COURT CASE QUESTION OF PRODUCTION Whether certain . documents should be produced in Court proceedings taken by a Gisborne ratepayer against the Local Government Loans Board

and the Gisborne: Fire Board' was a question argued before the Court of Appeal today. The appellants were George Charles Rodda, secretary, to the Treasury, and other members of the Loans Board, and the respondent was Henry Victor' Lunkeni retired storekeeper, of Gisborne- ,

On the Bench were their- Honours Mr. Justice Ostler, Mr. Justice Blair, Mr. Justice Kennedy, and Mr. Justice Callan.

Mr. A. E. Currie,.Crown Solicitor, appeared for the appellants, and Mr. L. T. Burnard, of Gisborne, for the respondent. In April last Lunken commenced an action as a Gisborne ratepayer against the Gisborne Fire Board and the members of the Local Government Loans Board to set aside the Loans Board's decision sanctioning the raising of a loan of £II,OOO by the Fire Board; to prohibit the Fire Board from acting on that decision; and to prevent it from raising and spending money, in pursuance of the loan proposals. . In the course of the:, proceedings Lunken called on the Loans Board to produce for inspection certain documents, but the Loans Board objected to that on the grounds that the • Minister of Finance had instructed that the documents were privileged in the public interest.

Although it was claimed on behalf of the Loans Board that the documents were State 'documents, the Acting Chief Justice, Sir John Reed, held in July that that could not be conceded. His Honour decided that the information placed before the Loans Board at a formal meeting by the documents in question whether •in the shape, of reports or records of evidence taken was not documents but was just the sort of material that would be required by the Loans Board to enable it to determine whether a loan should or should not be sanctioned. Prima facie they were not such documents toe. production of which would injure the State. His Honour added that the only other ground suggested by the Minister was that the documents - werei official and confidential, but' in his opinion that alone was not a good reason for their non-production. He accordingly made an order for the inspection of the documents, with the proviso that if any of them were submitted to him and found by him to be detrimental to the public service to produce, a supplementary order would be made withdrawing such documents from inspection. It was against the decision of his Honour that the Loans Board appealed. ■ Legal argument is proceeding.