IMPORTANT DECISION

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume X, Issue 2026, 15 September 1883, Page 2

IMPORTA N T DECISION

At the Native Land Court on Wednesday the Judge was asked as follows; Wheie laud has been granted to joint tenants, some of whom have sold their interests, and the purchaser has built on and improved the land, will the Court on the subdivision of the land favor the allocation of the purchaser's interests where he has so built and improved, or will the Court allow such improvements to be claimed by the grantees who have not alienated '! It is a question which? frequently occurs in attempted voluntary settlement, and which, when it so occurs, greatly impedes a conclusion. If the Court could see its way to rule as to what its practice would be in such cases, much useless discussion would be saved. And further, if the Court could inform the natives what its practice would be as to entertaining objections made by native grantees to subdivisions of a block, such subdivision being proposed to be awarded to purchasers, but the oujection being that such portions were the ancestral lands of the objectors, it would certainly materially facilitate outside agreements beiny arrived at, because the natives were at present in doubt on the subject, and would not accept the i/we dii-it of Europeans, whom they regarded as interested parties. Jlis Honor, Judge Bkoo f.kuj, replied that it was impossible to make a hard and fast rule, but that wherever it was possible, and except under very extraotdinary circumstances, a pi- 'chaser woald always receive his share where he had placed his improvements, the natives taking their shares wiere their whares and cultivations were situated. As to the second question, these were joint tenants, and the question of ancestral boundaries and localities could not be raised. The shares must be of equal acreage and value, but the location of the native shares would, so far as possible and as consistent with the answer just given, be in the locality wished by the natives.