GISBORNE LOAN DISPUTE

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19124, 19 September 1936, Page 5

GISBORNE LOAN DISPUTE

QUESTION OF DOCUMENTS

APPEAL COURT ARGUMENT

CHALLENGE TO JUDGE

(Per Press Association.) WELLINGTON, this day

An interlocutory appeal raising the issue of the liability of the Government to produce for the court's inspection, at the instance of an individual, documents which have been prepared by a Government department, for information of the Local Government Loans Board came before tho Court of Appeal in Wellington yesterday.

The acting Chief Justice, Sir John Reed, held in the Supreme Court in Gisborne thai Hie judiciary had power to decide whether the Government's objection to such a production, was, or was not, justifiably taken and he ordered the production, subject to further representations to be made to him as to any particular documents.

The Gisborne case was one in which Henry Victor Luuken, of Gisborne, a retired shopkeeper, sought a writ of certiorari to set. aside the decision of tho Local Government. Loans Board to grant, a loan to the Gisborne Fire Board, a writ prohibiting the fire board from proceeding further on the. purported decision of the board sanctioning the loan, and a writ of injunction prohibiting the raising of the loan.

Lunken's counsel had demanded that the documents should be produced, but the Government, through the Minister of Finance, interposed and instructed the secretary of the Local Government Loans Board not to produce the documents. The acting Chief Justice ordered the. production of the documents and leave to proceed to the Court of Appeal on the point was granted.

Mr. A. E. Curric, of the Crown Law Office yesterday addressed argument to the Court of 'Appeal, supported by authorities, that the discretion, of the executive of the Government, on a matter of the production of documents prepared by one State department for the information of another, was final. Mr. L. T. Burnard, of Gisborne, appeared to oppose the appeal. The hearing is to proceed on Monday.