THE FLAXBOURNE ESTATF.

Otago Witness, Issue 2661, 15 March 1905, Page 9

THE FLAXBOURNE ESTATF.

WELLINGTON, March 9,

Recently, after the Compensation Court had announced that no award had been arrived at, T. K. Macdonald, assessor for the Crown, gave the Post an interview, in which certain information was divulged and opinions expressed. Mr J. T. Skerrett, counsel for the proprietor of the estate, ha-s written to the journal in question to the following- effect: — "I am instructed by Sir G. Clifford, on behalf of the claimant's in the Flaxbourne case to enter an emphatic protest against the publication of an interView with tho Hon. T. K. Macdonald, assessor for the Crown, which appeared in your issue of February 28, while case was sub judice. My clients prefer this courserather than to bring the publication under the notice of the Supreme Court as contempt of court. I am necessarily precluded from any reply to Mr Macdonald, or to any comment whatever uuon the case, and must content myself with "formal protest against what I consider to be a flagrant violation of the rule which forbids comments upon a case while sub judice." In a footnote the editor says : — "Our publication was made in good faith, and in what we believe to be the public interest, and we should have be-en glad to give equal publicity to a similar statement on the other side. The comments in question related to the proceedings of a defunct court, and were made, not by ourselves, but by a. member of that court. As the original tribunal was " functus officio." and a new one had not yet been called into being, we are unable to see that any contempt can have been committed either of the dead or of the unborn. But technicalities apart» we certainly had no desire, to violate the spirit of the rule to which Mr Skerrett appeals."