WAS IT FAIR PLAY?

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 38, 7 May 1927, Page 11

WAS IT FAIR PLAY?

THE WITNESSES IN COURT COUNSEL CROSS SWORDS (Ff'om Our Resident Reporter.) WELLINGTON, Friday. Is it fair play for one counsel to ask, after his side of the case has been heard, that all witnesses should be ordered out of court for the hearing of the opposition side of the dispute? This question might well have been asked in the Magistrate’s Court today, when Mr. Barton, S.M., sat to hear the defence in an action under tlie Destitute Persons _x.ct, in which John Snell sued his son for maintenance. Mr. P. W. Jackson, who had presented his case, asked, when the defence was called, that witnesses be ordered out of court. This was the signal for an indignant outburst from Mr. W. E. Leicester, who was handling the defendant’s case. “Is it fair play?” he asked, “to .have witnesses ordered out of court at this stage, when everyone was present for the o_ther side?” Mr. Jackson: Well, you did not ask for it. Mr. Leicester: Oh, but I submit —. The Magistrate: Strictly speaking, Mr. Jackson, the application should be made at the beginning of the case, if at all. Mr. Jackson: Well, my friend apparently did not worry about it. The Magistrate: But you can hardly have you own case heard and then ask this of the other side. Mr. Jackson: My friend should have asked this. There is evidently to be a contradiction of my client’s statements.

The Magistrate: I don’t think you should press this point. Mr. Jackson: Oh, very well. Let it go. It went —and witnesses stayed in court.