NO JURISDICTION

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20120, 14 December 1939, Page 11

NO JURISDICTION

N.Z. SUPREME COURT SUIT AGAINST U.S. SHIP ASSAULT ALLEGATION CLAIM BY WIDOW (Pur Press Association.) WELLINGTON, this day. In a reserved judgment delivered yesterday, the Chief Justice, Sir Michael Myers, held that the Supreme Court had no jurisdiction in its capacity as the Admiralty Court to decide an action brought by a New Zealand subject against an American ship. Mrs. Rose Mabel Hamilton, Wellington, a widow, alleged in iter writ that she had been assaulted by Michael McDonough, an American night steward on the Monterey, on the high sens between Honolulu and New Zealand. on May 12, 1938, and an application was made to the court to dismiss the action for want of jurisdiction. The action was against the Monterey. His Honour said that so far as the question depended upon jurisdiction conferred by the statute, it was necessary, as the foundation of jurisdiction, that a claim should be for damage .’done by any ship. Assuming that the word “damage” in the statute included personal injury, the authorities showed that the ship must be the active cause of damage. It was not sufficient that an injury was done merely on board ship. .It must be done by the ship or those in charge of the ship, with the ship as the noxious instrument. That could not possibly be said in the present case.

The action was dismissed in accordance with the terms of the motion.