MAGISTERIAL NOTES.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXV, Issue 10713, 11 March 1913, Page 5

MAGISTERIAL NOTES.

(To the Editor.) Sir, —In the columns of your paper this morning there appeared a paragraph which contains a somewhat unusual statement, credited to the Magistrate at Carterton on Thursday last. Your reporter makes the Magistrate say, "he (tn-e Magistrate) was not there to take notes very fully. Some Magistrates took no notes at all nor were they compelled to. He resented very much the request of Counsel for him to take certain notes. If counsel wanted their questions and evidence taken note of, they should supply their own clerks or apply to the press." Surely your reporter has misrepresented the Magistrate!' Under the Magistrates Courts Act provision is made for appeals from decisions of the Magistrate on questions of law, or of fact or of both, and where questions of fact are involved in the appeal, it is provided that the appeal shall consist of a copy of the proceedings and of t •. notes of evidence taken by the Magistrate. It is suggested that these notes should be obtained from the Press reporters or that each solicitor should bring along to the. appeal judge his clerk's version of the evidence. It would be very interesting to hear the comments of the Judges on these notes. In the course of reading the other day I came across a case in which His Honor Mr Justice Edwards had occasion to refer to the notes of the 'Magistrate in an appeal case. Answering a contention of the appellant's counsel in the case then before him he isaid. "I may say at once that there is a -statutory duty cast upon the Magistrate in all questions involving over £SO to take as full and complete notes of evidence as are taken by the judges of this .(the Supreme) Court. It is quite impossible that the Court can re-hear the evidence in all such aopeals from the Magistrate." And he ordered the case to be 'rev-tried before Hie Magistrate and directed liim to take m-oper notes of the evidence. This observation of the Judge in mind, when T read your paragraph this morning, I was a little in doubt as to the correct procedure to be followed : but T hope I shall not. bo accused of subscribing to the new rule as reported by asking if your, reporter will verify the paragraph f'om his not-s «f the proceedings. Thanking you in anticipation. —I am, etc., iSTUDF.XT. Mastevton, March Sth, IW3. [The item in question was taken the Wairarapa News, to which we from the Wairarapa News, to which wo have pleasure in -referring our corespondent.—Ed Age.]