ACCIDENTS WITH ARMY VEHICLES

Evening Star, Issue 24278, 20 August 1942, Page 4

ACCIDENTS WITH ARMY VEHICLES

CITIZENS' RIGHT TO ACTION (P.A.) WELLINGTON, Aug. 19. Further representations are to be made by the North Island Motor Union to the Attorney-General, Mr .Mason, with the object of ensuring that claims brought by persons following accidents involving Army vehicles will be settled justly. The annual conference of the union to-day appointed a deputation to interview the Minister. Mr T. M. N. Rodgers (Manawatu) warned the union to make sure that they were not being lulled into a sense of false security. He had been told on the best of authority that the • regulations to be introduced would have the effect onlv of permitting the Army to admit liability when advised to do so, and that its adviser would be the State Fire Office. The union had asked that a person injured in a collision with an Army vehicle should have the right to applv to an ordinary court of British justice, but the proposed regulations would not give that. ■’ The union, Mr Rodgers added, should ask to see the draft of the. regulations because he was afraid they would be drawn up in a half-hearted, slipshod manner, and they might only cover cases in which the Army was so obviously responsible that the case would never have gone to the court in any case. A citizen should not be deprived of his right to bring his case to court.