SECRECY IN THE COURT.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 15099, 23 March 1911, Page 8

SECRECY IN THE COURT.

TEE WELLINGTON CASE.

/Peb TJhited Peess ASSOCIATION.) , WELLINGTON, March 22. '

The latest development in the ca.*e at Wellington in which the court refuses to allow names to be disclosed is that (according to the Dominion), " if certain security be provided, the next that will bo heard of the litigation will be in the Appeal Court nest month."

Tho following, which wo take from tho Solicitors' Journal and Weekly Reporter, of tho 7th January last, ©oncoming tho English practice in respect of tho hearing of criminal cases in camera, is of interest at tho present juncture:— "'Tho Punishment of Incest Act, 19JS,' under which the indictment in tho recent case of Rex v. Ball was preferred, enacts, by section 5, that all proceedings under tho act are. to be held in camera. Tho magistrate of tho Woolwich Police Court having requested tho reporters during tho hearing of a caso under the act to leave tho court, somo ohjeetion was made by a solicitor who was present, who said that there had been no formal ruling in the superior court as to what constituted a hearing in camera-. It has, of course, been a common practice to order women and children out of court when certain criminal charges are being hoard, but the order as to adult men bad neither common law nor statutory authority to support it, and was unforcoable by any lawful process. In Malan _y. Young, an action for libol tried in 1889 by Dernnan, J., without a jury, tho public, including barristers not concerned in the case, wore excluded by order of the judge and with the consent of the parties. But the power of tho judge w-ja at the time strongly questioned. Nullity cases under tho Matrimonial Causes Act are beard in camera, but it would seem that reporters are not excluded, as points of evidence arising in such cases navo been reported in the law reports. It must bo presumed that such reports havo been published with tho sanction of tho court, for in the case of ro Martindalo (1894, 3 Ch. 193), North, J., 6aid that he could not concdvo a clearer contempt of court than that a party concerned, or any person, should proceed forthwith to make known to tho world the verj matter which tho court had deliberately, in tho exoroise of its discretion, decided ought not' to ba published;"