SUCCESSFUL CLAIM

Waikato Times, Volume 193, Issue 22202, 23 November 1943, Page 2

SUCCESSFUL CLAIM

RATES WRONGLY LEVIED AREA OUTSIDE JURISDICTION Judgment for £152 10s, the amount agreed upon as having been overpaid, was delivered today by Mr Justice Johnston in the claim by New Zealand Forest Products, Limited (Mr J. Stanton, Auckland), against the Tokoroa Rabbit Board (Mr J. F. Strang. Hamilton). The original claim, heard in the Supreme Court, Hamilton, on October 29, was for £192 12s 6d, paid by plaintiff company for rates levied by defendant board on an area of 18,300 acres of land mistakenly assumed to have been situated within the boundaries of the defendant’s district. The plaintiff company owned 31,666 acres, of which 13,360 acres were within the board’s district. In the rating years 1938 to 1941 the board levied a rate against the whole area at 4d per acre and received full payment. The company claimed a refund of £152 10s. The rate was levied under the mistaken belief that the whole 31,666 acres were in the board’s district. Statutory Defence The statutory defence was that the ratepayers’ list and valuation roll included the whole area and that under the Rating Act, 1925, the ratebook was conclusive evidence in all courts of the correctness of its contents. His Honour held that a property not within the district over which the relevant rating authority had power to levy rates cannot be mode rateable by that authority by its inclusion in the ratepayers’ list or valuation roll. “The fact that the valuation roll from which the ratepayers’ list is filed is the valuation of a county of which the boundaries may not coincide with the boundaries of a particular rating authority with a different objective is likely, I think, to prove a frequent source of error* in the calculation of the ratepayers’ list and valuation roll for the latter authority,” said his Honour. “Mistakes so made cannot, however, in my opinion, extend the jurisdiction of an authority so erroneously compiling its list.”

His Honour, in recording judgment for £152 10s, said he considered the action was properly brought in the Court and allowed disbursements and costs.