SEQUESTRATION OF SUPREME COURT RECORDS CHALLENGED ON APPEAL

Published June 23, 2014 | By

The Supreme Court Registrar has effected a prohibition against lawyers and public accessing Supreme Court filings. This prohibition was judicially reviewed in the High Court, where, on 29 May 2014, Clifford J summarily struck out the judicial review claiming no jurisdiction to judicially review the Registrar. An appeal for leave directly to the Supreme Court (bypassing the Court of Appeal) has been lodged. The submissions in support of this application were filed on 23 June 2014. No opposition or submissions have been filed by counsel for the Registrar and Ministry of Justice.

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Why This Site is Necessary

The New Zealand Supreme Court was established by statute only in 2003. It replaced the Privy Council in England as New Zealand's highest court.
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Two years before its establishment, the New Zealand Court of Appeal was found by the Privy Council in Taito v Q [2002] UKPC 15 to have engaged in systemic abuses of due process by dismissing as many as 1,500 appeals on an ex-parte basis over the previous 10 years, sometimes on the signature of a court registrar - dismissals often given only in handwritten notations on the court file.
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The public have been told these abuses have ceased despite the Court of Appeal judges found culpable for these due process breaches being the first appointees to the new Supreme Court. Only by seeing the public court records which these judges have been hiding will we truly know.