EXTRAORDINARY PROCEDURE.

Southland Times, Issue 16688, 17 March 1911, Page 5

EXTRAORDINARY PROCEDURE.

JUSTICE SHUNS PUBLICITY. (Per United Press Association.) WELLINGTON. March 16. A certain case, which has been the subject of a good deal of talk in town, was again before the Chief Justice yesterday, and again the proceedings were strictly private. The registrar told waiting pressmen that they would not be allowed to be present, and said that the Court had made an order to that effect, and that the Chief Justice wished them to withdraw. Subsequently, replying through a subordinate officer of the Court, to a question by press representatives, the registrar said that the publication of the names of the case was also forbidden. SOME SANE COMMENT. (Special to the Times.) CHRISTCHURCH, March 16. Under the heading of “Suppressing the Facts,” to-night's Star comments strongly on the secrecy enveloping the Wellington Supreme Court case. It says: • "We cannot conceive' the circumstances in which the exclusion of the Press from ordinary Court proceeding would be justified What we have to remember is that irregularities always begin with the suppression of facts. In the Interests of moralit)' the newspapers ought to be trusted, in this country they can be trusted to treat all classes of news with discretion. The recognition of the right of the Press to be represented in Court is the surest guarantee of the clean administration of justice, and we have before this recorded our own conviction that the measures already adopted in New Zealand for the suppression of law news constitute a grave danger. The newspapers should never have consented to the rule which empowers a Judge to prohibit the publication of the evidence in divorce and other cases. . . . We shall surely find that the exclusion of the reporters from the Supreme Court in Wellington will lead directly to the fullest dissemination of gossip concerning the case. The public will fill in for themselves the details that are not reported, and the grossest exaggeration will be the general rule. In a few days the names of the parties and the stories about the case will be known all over the Dominion. The curiosity of the public has been stimulated and it will have to be satisfied. It would have been a thousand times better from every point of view if the reporters had been admitted, and a quiet word had been addressed to them from the Bench as to the propriety of recording only the bare facts. Such a word would scarcely have been necessary; but It would have served the purpose that the Judge had in view."