WHAT CONSTITUTES A COURT.

Evening Star, Issue 7431, 28 January 1888, Page 2

WHAT CONSTITUTES A COURT.

The following is the full text of the judgment by Mr Justice Williams yesterday in the case of Glover and others v. Robinson and O’Neill:—“The first question to bo decided is tfie meaning of the words ‘ Resident Magistrate’s Court’ in the 48th section of the Regulation of Local Elections Act, 1870. By that section the declaration objecting to the election is to be filed in any Resident Magistrate’s Court in the district in which the election takes place, or if there is no such Court in the district, then in the Resident Magistrate s Court nearest thereto. Now, the primary meaning of the term ‘ Resident Magistrate's Ccwrt ’ and the meaning which is affixed to the term ‘court’ in the Resident Magistrate’s Act, 18(57, has reference to the Court as a sitting tribunal; but as section 48 requires a document to be filed in the Court, it can hardly be contended that the words ‘ Resident Magistrate’s Court ’ in that section refer to the Resident Magistrate’s Court as a sitting tribunal. Considering that the act of filing has to be done in the Court, the term ‘ court ’ must have a reference of some kind to locality. The question therefore is whether Macraes is a locality within the meaning of the term, l>low, there is a court-house at Macraes, a building at which the Court sits at very irregular intervals of sometimes three and sometimes four months. There is also a person who has the appointment of clerk to the Court at Macraes—that is, of course, clerk to the Court while it is sitting at Macraes; the clerk only goes to Macraes when the Magistrate visits Macraes at these rare intervals. It would require a great deal to persuade me that under these circumstances the Legislature contemplated that Macraes should be the propep place for the filing of this declaration. As Sir R. Stout has put it, to file a document means to lodge it with the proper officer among the records of the Court. At Macraes there is no proper officer, and there is no repository of records of the Court. At I’alinerston, however, there is a proper officer, -who is generally there, and there is an office of the Court in which the records are deposited. 1 think it is quite plain that the meaning of the words ‘ Resident Magistrate's Court ’ insection4B, as it cannot refer to Court as a sitting tribunal, must mean simply Resident Magistrate’s Court office. I have no doubt, indeed, that the words ought to be read in that way, and that as the nearest Resident Magistrate’s Court office was Palmerston, that Palmerston was the proper place—the place where the declaration ought to have been filed. As to the other point, it seems to me that Mr O’Neill was never properly nominated as a candidate, as at the time of his nomination he was under age, and therefore not a county elector; and, moreover, that, being under age, he was in-! capable of assenting to the nomination as i the law requires. I think, therefore, that the mandamus should go for the Magis- j trate to hoar and determine the validity of the election.”