COURT NEWS

Grey River Argus, 6 December 1940, Page 10

COURT NEWS

ASSAULT CHARGE. CHRISTCHURCH, December 5. Roy Clifford Pullar, aged 36, an electrician ■ employed at Wigram aerodrome by the Public Works Department, was convicted on a charge of assaulting a woman on December 3 and was fined 20s. A plea by Mr. J. K. Moloney for non-publica-tion of the accused’s name was not allowed, but the Magistrate said that it was inadvisable to allow the woman’s name to be published. Detective-Sergeant J>. McClung said that' Pullar had been working on the complainant’s electric cooker. She had been working near him. He had put a hand on her and pushed her away, and then apologised. Mr. Moloney said that Pullar’s apologising to the woman had made her think there was something sinister about the incident, and she was upset. Pullar was married man of good character, who had acted on an impulse. He had lost his position.

The Magistrate in convicting Pullar, said that there had been no familiarity on the part of the woman, while defendant had been attracted to her. Apparently to protect himself from his own weakness defendant had pushed her away, but that, of course, amounted to assault. Fines of £lO each for failing to clear gorse from their property near Worsley’s .track (near the Cashmere Estate) were imposed on Robert Angus Brown and John George Brown, brothers, and joint owners of the property, by Mr. H. A. Young, S.M., in the Magistrate’s Court yesterday. Mr. A. C. Perry, who represented the Heathcote County Council, said that both defendants had been served with notices to clear the gorse from their 87-odd acres, and had failed to do so thereby failing to comply with the Noxious Weeds Act. For similar offences they had been fined 30s each 18 months ago and £5 each 12 months ago.

The county foreman (Mr. W. W. Scarff) gave evidence. In fining the defendants, the Magistrate issued a warning that the maximum penalty was £5O.

WHITEBAITER CONVICTED. CHRISTCHURCH, December 5. Al submission by counsel that the Whitebait Regulations were “shockingly inconsistent” and his criticism of a prosecution brought at a time when amendments were under consideration, were not upheld by Mr, H. A. Young S.M., in his decision on a case heard in the Magistrate’s Court yesterday. He convicted the defendant, Herbert Brown, on three charges of breaking the regulations, and ordered payment of costs on each.

The charges against Brown were that on September 14 at New Brighton (1) he used a boat for fishing for whitebait in a river (the Avon) in which groynes or similar contrivances were used, (2) he unlawfully used a device tending to prevent or divert the movement of whitebait up or down stream, and (3) he unlawfully used a set net to take whitebait in the Avon.

Inspector M. Hope said that Brown had a moored boat in the lower Avon, and had used a fixed net between the boat and a groyne. He also had in each hand a six-foot stick which he moved about to divert whitebait into the net. “I reminded him that I had warned him not to use a boat in the lower Avon,” the inspector said, “and he said he remembered the warning, but that the secretary of the Avon Whitebaiters’ Association had advised him not to take any notice of me.” Brown, he said, had refused to surrender the deflector and net, but had signed a statement admitting the facts as set out. His , signature, as he could not read or write was indicated by a cross. Difficulties in enforcing the regulations had been considerable, he said. There was only one inspector for half the South Island. Whitebaiting had been slipping back to such an extent that this year he had been told to enforce all regulations.” To Mr. F. D. Sargent (counsel for defendant), the inspector said he was not familiar with the practice adopted in the lower Avon, and applied in the last 10 or 15 years, and was not aware that the use of a drag had been common.

” Mr. Sargent (questioning the inspector’s authority for not renewing certain licences): You are perhaps yourself inclined to take the law into your own hands a bit, are you not?—l do not think so, by any means.

Mr. Sargent; Did you not alter a licence, an official document?—No. Inspector Hope added that he had the authority of the Chief' Inspector of Fisheries for not issuing new (renewing) licences for boats oh the lower Avon.

Mr. Sargent: I put it to you that the section on boat licences applies entirely to sea fishing. In reply to a further query, the inspector said that under the regulations a man would not be entitled to remove his hand from a hand-net even for a minute, but he could say that the regulation was “pretty liberally administered.” It was true, the inspector said, that this association had received a letter from Mr. A. E. Hefford, Chief Inspector of Fisheries, similar to letters sent to 300 fishermen throughout New Zealand asking for their views on the new draft regulations, but this prosecution, he said, had started before the letters were sent out.

No prosecution, Mr. Sargent submitted, had been brought for years and there had not been objections to the methods used. The present regulations were far from satisfactory, and the prosecution was ill-timed as the regulations were in process of remodelling. It seemed to be a matter purely between the inspector and the fishermen. There were, he said, “shocking inconsistencies” in the present regulations, especially as applied to use of boats, and to definition of groynes, nets, and other devices. He would contend that the brushwood fences erected in the Avon were not groynes, that the device used by Brown was not the one defined in the regulations as applying to the diverting of the fish, and that the net used was not a set net as defined. There was moreover, no provision at all for the registration of boats unless they went to sea.

George Henry Nankivell, secretary of the Avon Whitebaiters’ Association, said in evidence that the method used by Brown was a common one. When Brown had been refused a boat licence, he said, he (Nan-

kivell) had written to Mr. Hefford and been told “to carry on without a licence and to fish exactly as we did last year.” He said he had not told Brown to ignore the inspector. Inspector Hope (to witness): You are not aware that all the bank fishermen object to the boat fishing, and have asked what I can do about ‘these poachers’?”—No. “Is it not true that when I started tightening up the regulations you formed this association to combat me?” —No. Witness said that one of the aims of the association was to see that the regulations were not broken.