LETTERS PRIVILEGED

Evening Star, Issue 22686, 28 June 1937, Page 11

LETTERS PRIVILEGED

COMMUNICATION TO POLICE A JUDICIAL FINDING [Per United Press Association.] WELLINGTON, June 28. A claim for privilege for letters written to the Police Department by Lady Hunter asking for an investigation into the treatment of wool and skins on the Porangahau sheep station was upheld by Mr Justice Smith in the Supreme Court to-day, and the letters, which were put in by Detective-sergeant Evell as a sealed exhibit on Friday, were returned to the Police Department. The Judge said it was plain he was entitled to look at the letters for himself for the purpose of determining whether the public interest required that they should not be disclosed. He had looked at them, and found that, taken together, they could properly be described as the letters of an informer to the police, asking for police investigation into an alleged crime. In those circumstances tho letters seemed to come within the authority of the passage in the judgment of the Court of Appeal which, interpreted broadly, meant that, except where the liberty of tho subject was involved, complaints to the police were privileged. This was not a criminal case, and as the letters prima facie came within the judgment he referred to, he would be unable to order their production, and they would be handed back to the police. To a question by Mr Weston, the judge said if a letter was once privileged, even copies could not be produced. It was in paramount public interest that any person was entitled to communicate with the police, and that the communication was privileged.