RIDING ON GRASS PLOTS

Hawera Star, Volume LIII, 16 June 1933, Page 6

RIDING ON GRASS PLOTS

BY LAW NOT REASONABLE,

APPEAL COURT DECISION

(By Telegraph—Press Association). \ WELLINGTON, June 15. The Court of Appeal has upheld the appeal of Doris Martin, Palmerston North, from the conviction imposed upon her by Mr J. L. Stout, S.M., at Palmerston North on November 21 for riding a horse along a grass plot in Church Street contrary to the by-law of that city.

Mr T. L. Belling, for the apjjellant, at the hearing of the appeal in March submitted that the by-law was unreasonable and ultra vires in that it had no statutory authority. The material question was whether large parts of streets could be taken away from the public and converted into grass plots across which the public could not travel. Before any council could interfere with the public use of a highway special statutory authority was necessary, and Mr Rolling submitted that the Palmerston North. City Council had not that authority. The grass .plots, counsel said, ran for miles on both sides of the street with varying widths of from 6 to 20 feet, with the result that the public was greatly impeded in its use of the highway and a danger was created by con-' gesti'on of traffic. Mr Justice MacGregor, in' the judgment, in which the Chief Justice and Judges Ostler and Smith concurred, held the by-law to be ultra vires by the council and repugnant to the laws of New Zealand. His Honour also considered it unreasonable and uncertain in. its terms and for those reasons the appeal would be allowed and the conviction quashed with costs 12 guineas to the appellant. The proceedings were ordered to he remitted back to the magistrate with a direction to dismiss the information with appropriate costs. Mr Justice Reed dissented from the judgment and held that the council had statutory authority to plant the plots in question and that if a local body had a legal right to erect or constitute anything, such as a plot on a street, it had also the legal right 'to make by-laws reasonably necessary for protection, of the erection. In his opinion the appeal should he dismissed.