ARBITRATION COURT

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVII, Issue 223, 20 August 1937, Page 6

ARBITRATION COURT

UNUSUAL PROCEEDING. A SPECIAL APPOINTMENT. Per Press Association. AUCKLAND, Aug. 19. The two lay memliers of the Arbitration Court, Messrs A. L. Monteith and W. C. Prime, will fly to New Plymouth to-morrow morning in order to hear a claim for compensation there. The sitting will be presided over by Mr Justice Smith who, to enable him to do so, has been specially gazetted as an acting-judge of the Court of Arbitration- The necessity for this procedure has arisen from the fact that the Judge of llie Court, Mr Justice O’Regan, had, prior to his appointment, issued a writ as counsel in the compensation case which is to be heard. This necessarily disqualified him from sitting in judgment on the matter. A similar position has already arisen since Mr Justice O’Regan left his practice at the Bar to preside over the Court, and it will arise again in several Auckland compensation claims in which His Honour was acting earlier for the claimant.

In Timaru such difficulty was got over by both parties agreeing to the local Stipendiary Magistrate presiding over the sitting, but here it is anticipated that another Judge will bfe specially gazetted to act. Early in Mr Justice Page’s term as Judge of the Arbitration Court, he was faced with the position that an appeal was being made to the Court against a decision he had given as Magistrate. He met the difficulty by stating the case for the Court of Appeal. The lay members of 'the Court will return to Auckland by air from New Plymouth, and on Monday the Court will sit here to' hear preliminaries regarding the standard rates of wages.