Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 1910. AN ABSURD PROSECUTION.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10136, 5 November 1910, Page 4

Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 1910. AN ABSURD PROSECUTION.

The ea.se heard in the Magistrate's Court at Mastorton yesterday, in which a medical man was charged with an obstruction of the railway, was one of the flimsiest and most absurd that- has ever been brought in a Court of Justice in this Dominion. Hon.- was a medical man, proceeding on a motor bicycle to Maurieevillo, a distance of fifteen miles, to attend an urgent ease. On the journey his bicycle breaks down, and he goes to the nearest crossing and hails- a passing train. The driver pulls up, the doctor is taken aboard, his fare is accepted, together with the ordinary fine, and no injury is J done to anybody. To construe such an act as this into a breach of the Taw, and to enter a prosecution, is to strain the meaning of the Statute to breaking point. It is, of course, and rightly should be an offence to stop a train without reasonable excuse. Assuming, however, that the doctor had discovered that a culvert had been washed away at Kopuaraiiga, and, to avoid a disaster, he had stopped the train, would a prosecution have been entered? Would the medical gentleman have been hauled before the court and penalised for his conduct? It is to be hoped not. And yet he would have committed a technical broach of the Act in the same way as he did on the p:-:, r jc::t occasion* U« rtopgesl slie *

train merely because lie wanted to save life. And the Railway Department, apparently knowing the circumstances, thought tit to enter a prosecution. Ono cannot help thinking that the Department acted in a most arbitrary and harsh manner, and that they were straining the, law to its very utmost in the case. The Magistrate very properly dismissed the information, and it will be surprising if a question upon the subject is not asked in the House of Representatives.