Wellington Independent SATURDAY, JULY 15, 1871.

Wellington Independent, Volume XXVI, Issue 3252, 15 July 1871, Page 2

Wellington Independent SATURDAY, JULY 15, 1871.

We wonder what proportion of suitors gain anything by a lawsuit. After the costs are paid on both sides, how much on the average remains of the subject matter of the dispute ? Is litigation worth the candle to those engaged in it ? Even when the parties are not exacerbated by hostile feeling, they too often find the inscription over the gates of Dante's Hell that which they might inscribe on the door ofthe palace of justice — " Leave all hope behind you who enter here ;" or rather, " you will leave all cash behind, ye who depart from hence." " A friendly chancery suit," we once heard a friend exclaim, to whom such a proceeding was recommended — " a friendly cholera morbus !" No doubt, in a vast number of cases the result would be much the same ! " You take my life when you do take that by which I live ;" and, certainly, the pangs and gripes of the physical disease arc not much less tolerable than those which rack the unfortunate victim of litigation, whether he succeed or whether he fail. So long, however, as mankind are divided into the two great family branches of knaves and fools, and so long as business is conducted on the sharp practice principles which too generally regulate it, we shall have courts of law to settle the differences which will arise. And so long as the cost of the operation falls exclusively on the litigants, we outsiders have perhaps no-right to complain.

But as the establishments by which law is dispensed aro kept up at the public cost, the tax-payer has a right to enquire whether he gets full value for his money, and whether he is not unduly buidened for somebody else's good. Our attention is called to the matter by the sitting of the Court of Appeal, which is at present being held in this city. We are extremely glad to see the right worshipful gentlemen who compose the Supreme Court sitting '• like gods together" in horsehair and bombazeon, on the judicial bench of the Appeal Court. It is a sight which is calculated to impress the minds of all who behold it with feelings of reverence and awe, and it might contribute to the making of many law-abiding citizens, if our school cliil-

(ken were tuken to the court during its session, in order that their young minds might appreciate the solemnity and dignity of the exhibition. We remember forming one of a number who were thus taught loyalty to the British con stitution by a visit to Madame Tussaud's waxworks, where we got into the august presence of the " counterfeit presentment" of King George the Third, and the virtuous Queen who shared his bed and throne, and were taught by the respectable Mentor, who paid our sixpence a head, to reverence ever after the divine institution of kingship. There is, however, this difference ; the waxy monarch and his female partner, were placed there only to collect sixpences, and awe the beholder. The judges of the Court of Appeal have other functions ; the principal of which is this, that when a number of ingenious lawyers have split hairs into the smallest possible fibres, the Court, with what Mr Weller calls " a double million magnifying glass" ascertains and decides whose split hair is the thickest ; a result of which often in that the poor litigimt who had got the best of it in the court below, gets the worst of it in the court above, and the vmii'.-fc given by a

jury of his countrymen under the guidance of a single judge is reversed by a full bench of judges, without any jury at all. However, the lawyers like it, and it is to be presumed their clients do also ; we should therefore have no right to have any opinion on the fitness of things in this direction, were it not that we, who are neither lawyers nor clients, we the taxpayers, have to pay the cost of the sitting of the court. We are at liberty therefore to ask whether the court is worth the money it costs, and whether, if we must have a supreme tribunal of appeal, we might not have one which would be less expensive to the public, and, we might add, less ruinous to the litigant. The great fault of the present Court, it appears to us, is that its judges are brought so far to do so little. Five judges, including their chief, are brought from the several" judicial districts, hundreds of miles apart, to decide some dozen or fewer cases, in many 0/ which the poiut for decision is neither a very weighty nor a very difficult one, and in many of which it is clear that the only reason for appealing was to give the lawyer of the party defeated below a chance of getting his costs by reversing the decision in the court above — the subject matter having long ago been dissolved by the process so exactly described in the fable of the disputed oyster. No doubt now and then there are cases worthy of a Jovian nod, but they are few and far between, and there would be little hardship done if the community, as a rule, were compelled, to abide the decision of the original trial, and not have the opportunity of prolonging litigation by carrying the case to a court of appeal. However, if they like, let them ; only don't make us taxpayers pay unnecessarily for a proceeding which, it seems to us, might be much more cheaply effected. For instance, suppose the defeated party below wishes to appeal. Instead of dragging the learned judges about the colony, subject to the actual horrors of sea travel and the possible horrors of shipwreck, while the work of their district is necessarily neglected, more or less, why not make the appellant state his grounds in writing, referring specially to the cases by which the judges must be guided ; let the appeal be settled be- . tween the lawyers, as in a special case, subject to the concurrence of the Judge who tried the cause ; and then, being printed for a few pounds or shillings, let a copy be sent to each Judge for his written judgment. Surely this ought to satisfy nny reasonable man, and in all probability not in one case in 10,000 would any other decision be arrived at than that which would have been given if the Court had sat as at present, and hundreds of pounds had been paid to dozens of lawyers to split millions of hairs. Another fault of the Court which we have heard imputed by lawyers in other parts of the colony is, that sitting as it does, at one central place, it is impossible for lawyers not residing at that place to leave their business for a long period and attend the sitting ofthe Court ! at Wellington. It ia equally impossible, as a general rule, that they can trust j their client's case to a. Wellington lawyer, who has not been previously acquainted with it, and had practical experience in I the Court below of the niceties on which it may turn. The proposal we have made, to proceed by way of printed documents, referred separately to each judge, would place all lawyers on one footing, and relieve the client from 1 a very heavy amount of costs when at present the case is reargued at length in | open Court. j Another saving which might be ' effected if the valuable time of the j judges were not occupied by the sittings of the Appeal Court is, that they might undertake a large amount of work now delegated to District Court judges and wardens of gold-fields. Many thousands of pounds, we suspect, might be annually saved if the time now occupied in the Appeal Court were employed in the business of these inferior courts ; while the character of the latter would be elevated by their being a branch of the Supreme Court, and presided over by judges of the highest stamp which the colony possesses. In conclusion, we may remark that one class of cases which is, of all, the most likely to give work for a Court of Appeal — those which relate to landed estate — will in New Zealand, we hope, give little scope for litigation hereafter. The intricacy and tibtruseness of the law relating to that species of property , hitherto, particularly in Great Britain, is happily got rid of by the Real Property Transfer Act; and the plentiful crop of appeal cases which might have been looked for in future years from this source, will, it is hoped, now have no existence. This is an additional reason for such an alteration as we propose. We earnestly hope that the Provincial Secretary will advise his Honor the Superintendent not to accept the resignations of Messrs Halcombe and Hunter. It will indeed be a dark day for Wellington, when we have to record that the province has lost the services of Messrs Hunter and Halcombe for the sake of a man who has more than once figured as a drunken brawler and bully in our police courts, and who has grossly insulted our present Superintendent by applying to him, at public meetings, epithets too shameful to be reproduced in print. Such an appointment, when noissd abroad, will make every man who has a regard for the honor of the province hang down his head for very shame. We will be laughed at from one end of the colony to the other. Nor does it lessen the public disgrace when we reflect that he was lately a member of our Provincial Council, and that this appointment is the price unblushinglypaid him for voting against his conscience. That the Provincial Government of Wellington, in its present , straits, should give £150 per annum to a man for his services as au official, when " considerations connected with his health" have " rendered it advisable"

that he should not continue to do a few weeks' duty in the year as a member of Council, is monstrous, and must bring a blush of shame into the cheeks of every one who has any regard for honor and consistency. What will the Assembly think of our Government now — a Government that has been content to lose as a member one whose personal character and political consistency must secure him a high place in the House, and for whom ? For a man who is physically disqualified for an official position, and who could not, according to common rumor, be allowed to enter upon its duties without a stipulation, that if his character, after being appointed, is no belter than it was before it, he would be summarily dismissed. That such a shameful thing has been attempted is humiliating enough ; that it should be consummated will be nothing short of a public calamity and disgrace.