SAMOAN LIBEL APPEAL

Taranaki Daily News, 16 July 1930, Page 11

SAMOAN LIBEL APPEAL

PRIVILEGE DENIED BY CROWN

FULL COURT RESERVES DECISION.

SOLICITOR’S “RECKLESS LETTER.”

I By T<l«gr«iph.—Frees Association. i Wellington, July 1-5. I The hearing of the appeal by Thomas ■Benjamin Slipper, solicitor, against his j conviction for a defamatory libel in a 'letter to the Administrator of Western ■ Samoa was resumed by the Full Court : this morning. Slipper had been fined £lO5 and sentenced to imprisonment for three months by the Chief Justice (Mr. Luxford) at Apia. The Full Court reserved its decision. The Solicitor-General contended that the letter to the Administrator contained several gross defamatory libela which were that the Administrator deliberately adopted and determined to continue the terrorisation of women and children; that the Administrator regarded the safety of Samoan women and children as of no consequence; that the Administrator would not prevent unnecessary victimisation and shooting of women and children; that death and bloodshed were of small consequence to the Administrator compared with his desire, evident and expressed, of absolution. The Solicitor-General submitted that considering the surrounding circumstances and the time when the letter was written, it was hard to conceive a libel more calculated to bring the Administrator into hatred and contempt. The charges in the letter were absolutely false and made the Administrator out to be a man with whom no decent person would associate and absolutely unfitted for the duties of the office placed upon him.'"Slipper had endeavoured to make the letter as insulting and abusive as possible. The letter was not entitled to protection as being privileged, as the privilege was destroyed because the charges * were made recklessly and the letter contained defamatory statements irrelevant to matters in the common interest. Neither Slipper nor his lady clients had any honest belief in the truth of the statements. The privilege of Slipper as a solicitor was co-extensivo with that of his clients and his clients had none. The Solicitor-General said there were two separate charges proved against •Slipper, and he was rightly convicted in respect to both. The Administrator was a member of the Legislative Council of Western Samoa and a member of the Civil Service. The officer holding the highest official post was not made expressly a member of. the Council, but was entitled to preside with the right to veto. His position in the Council, however, was not made precisely clear by statute, but there was no doubt that; ho was a member of the Civil Service, and that established the second charge. The Court had no power to review the amount'of sentence imposed by the Chief Judge of Samoa.