£l0,000 DAMAGES CLAIMED

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 699, 26 June 1929, Page 1

£lo,ooo DAMAGES CLAIMED

ACTION AGAINST “N.Z. HERALD”

HON- 0. F. NESON’S WRIT FOR LIRE

CLAIMING that he has been libelled by the “New Zealand Herald” on two separate occasions, the Hon. O. F. Nelson has instituted proceedings for damages amounting to £IO,OOO against Messrs. Wilson and Horton, Ltd., as proprietors, printers and publishers of that newspaper. A writ has been issued and service has been accepted. The action will be based on parts of the text of a leading article published in January, 1928, and a sub-leader published on June 19, 1929. £5,000 is claimed in each case.

In his statement of claim Mr. Nelson says, in the first instance, that the defendants printed in a sub-leader on June 19 words which intended to mean that be was passively and actively inciting the Samoan people to breaches of the civil and criminal laws of Samoa and the New Zealand Government, and was thereby party to criminal and seditious offences. Also, that the evidence of such acts or conduct was established beyond possibility of doubt, and that plaintiff had been and was continuing this incitement of criminal and seditious offences at the present time, and that de was unrepentant for such offences but was rather going further in the pursuance of such acts and offences regardless of his social and moral duty to society, to his fellow citizens, and to the Government generally; and, further, that he was conspiring and intriguing to subvert the administration in Samoa, and that he was inciting, and had been, up to the present time, inciting the trouble between the Samoans and the administration In Samoa.

In the second instance, he says, the defendants printed on January 24,

1928, a leading article, the words of which meant that the plaintiff was an intriguer and conspirator against the administration, with dishonourable and criminal purpose; that his intentions were evil, and that he sought unconstitutionally to bring discredit and ridicule on the administration of Samoa, and that he was so uncontrollable, bad beyond correction, and irreformable that there was no course but his deportation; that plaintiff pursued a criminal and dishonest course for his own personal interests as opposed to the well-being of Samoa.

That he was responsible for the organisation of the Mau and the defiance of law by its members and the evils alleged to have followed therefrom. That the citizens* committee with Mr. Nelson at its head was a conspiracy to incite the natives to disorder for his own evil purposes and wicked designs and finally he, while under the British flag, abused his rights of citizenship and dishonourably, in his wrong-doing, used the protection which the flag had given him.