More pressure on Justice Wilson
April 10th, 2010 at 7:42 am by David FarrarThe Weekend Herald has two articles on the embattled Supreme Court Justice Bill Wilson.
This article reveals that former Court of Appeal Judge, Sir Ted Thomas, has written an 18 page letter to the Judicial Conduct Commissioner:
Sir Edmund (Ted) Thomas, formerly of the Court of Appeal, wrote an 18-page complaint to the Judicial Conduct Commissioner, raising concerns that Justice Wilson had failed to fully disclose a debt he owed a senior lawyer at a time the lawyer argued a case before him.
This was to QC Alan Galbraith.
Sir Edmund’s complaint sets out respects in which he asserts Justice Wilson failed to meet required ethical standards of judicial conduct.
He added: “Based on my 43 years’ or so experience at the bar and on the bench, I believe that any other judge I have known would have stood down or made a complete disclosure.”
The bigger issue, in my opinion, is not the original decision to hear the case, but the failure to disclose the debt to fellow Supreme Court members.
According to a copy of his complaint obtained by the Weekend Herald, he considers the matter is too serious for the conduct commissioner to refer it to Chief Justice Sian Elias.
He wrote that this course of action should be ruled out because of the horse-racing interests Dame Sian, her husband, Hugh Fletcher, and Justice Wilson shared until recently.
If it is not referred to the Chief Justice, then that is effectively saying it is a potentially sackable offence, and it is hard to see how Justice Wilson would not resign, rather than undergo a judicial conduct panel.
The more serious revelation is in their second article:
In addition to the fact that Justice Wilson had not made full disclosure to the Court, Sir Edmund had understood that Galbraith had been pressing Justice Wilson for payment in 2007.
Which indicates it should be top of mind for disclosure.
“Mr Farmer was extremely critical of Justice Wilson’s failure to disclose the indebtedness and endorsed a comment made by Mr Carruthers [Colin Carruthers, QC] that ‘Bill [Justice Wilson] has feet of clay’.”
Sir Edmund states that he was told that Carruthers, a friend of Justice Wilson, “had tried and tried to persuade him to disclose the indebtedness but he had adamantly refused”.
This had become more distressing for those in the know after the Supreme Court ruled on July 3 last year that on the basis of information provided by Justice Wilson, there appeared to be no basis for a finding of apparent bias.
The part I have bolded appears to be a smoking gun.
It is one thing to have overlooked disclosing the debt to the Supreme Court as it was not top of mind, and you did not consider it potentially relevant.
But if a senior QC had been lobbying you to disclose the debt, and Justice Wilson refused to do so, then he was deliberately concealing the information from his fellow Judges, and not allowing them to decide for themselves if the debt was material.
The time-frame is not absolutely clear, but it looks like the entreaty from Mr Carruthers was made prior to the first Supreme Court hearing. If that was the case, then I’d say that has made the position of Justice Wilson untenable – a conclusion I have not been willing to make previously.
Sir Edmund records that he spoke to the Chief Justice by phone on July 20 and read her the notes he had made of his communications with Farmer but did not disclose Farmer’s identity.
Dame Sian had told him that she had received “a categorical assurance” from Justice Wilson that he was not “beholden” to Galbraith. She felt unable to act when the source was anonymous and in the absence of a formal complaint. The Chief Justice was “sickened” by what he told her, Sir Edmund wrote, and repeatedly asked him to persuade his source to come forward and make a formal complaint.
Which has effectively happened with Sir Ted revealing it was Jim Farmer. And if Justice Wilson did make a “categorical assurance” to the Chief Justice, it again makes things worse.
April 10th, 2010 at 8:33 am
This goes far further than the Judiciary though. Serious in all as the objections raised by Thomas are. It drags into the spotlight the fact that in the higher echelons of the legal profession in this country there are the internecine tanglings of interest, mateship and double dealing always alleged by the crank conspiracy theorists. This country needs to acknowledge that at a total population of 4.5 million, with 10% of its population having fled to asylum in overseas countries, there is simply insufficient disinterested talent to run some of our own stuff.
Prime among these are a Presidency ( were we ever to become a Republic)
And a Supreme Court System. Many wise people told Clark and her lot this, but it was full steam ahead. Now the first shoals are appearing, and we have not got the resources untainted, to be able to recover from it.
The answers are unpalatable. Either merge ourselves at a high level of administration with Australia, pooling our minimal talent resources with theirs, or better still remain as we are as a Monarchy, and see if the UK will again allow us access to appeal our most serious cases to them. The current stumblings and bumblings are a National disgrace!
Vote:April 10th, 2010 at 8:44 am
The fact that the judge’s omission lead the Supreme Court to make an incorrect decision shows that the judge’s conduct ‘perverted’ the course of justice. He should be charged criminally with ‘perverting or defeating the course of justice’, an offence often described as ‘striking at the heart of the administration of justice’.
Vote:April 10th, 2010 at 9:17 am
A variation on the suggestions of fatman43us (78) at 8:33 am:
We often read that the small Pacific Island nations have police commissioners or chief justices from NZ or Australia. Perhaps we, as a small nation, should be looking to imported justices from the UK and Australia, perhaps Canada as well, as their system is similarly based on the UK system.
It’s a problem we try to address in scientific peer review – the NZ community is simply too small, and so we tend to try to get international reviewers as well as local ones.
Vote:April 10th, 2010 at 12:26 pm
This scandal demonstrates why NZ was mad to abandon access to the (free) Privy Council in favour of establishing own Supreme Court.
New Zealand’s judicary population is simply too small to avoid conflicts of interest like this happening again.
This is amply demonstrated by the recent case involving a retired Judge in Auckland being charged with criminal damage. The Justice Department had to go all the way to the bottom of the South island to find a Judge to hear the case, who did not know the accused.
Bring back the Privy Council as our highest Court to ensure impartiality.
Vote:April 10th, 2010 at 1:10 pm
Wilson has got to go. He has brought the whole NZ judicial system into disrepute.
As far as bias cases go, most I have read about have involved far less serious non-disclosures than this, such as distant family ties, etc.
Vote:This judge owed a quarter million to a lawyer of a party in a case he sat in. Truly disgusting. As ernesto says, there could be more serious offences the judge could be hit with.
April 10th, 2010 at 2:49 pm
David in Chch suggests:
An excellent suggestion, having the additional advantage that judges sent to different countries and interacting with their peers there will get a broader view of crime, criminality, justice issues and the success (or otherwise) of various innovations within the courts and policing.
I’d be happy with some WA judges being shipped to NSW or Victoria to learn that the population isn’t a seething mass of knife-wieding criminals so that they might strike down stop and search laws and suchlike, but actually sending them out of the country, away from the sensationalist local media, would give them an even better education.
And NZ judges visting here could learn, for instance, that separate, ethnic-based courts are a disaster but that even former senior police officers acknowledge that police brutality is on the rise, all in a single week!
Vote:April 10th, 2010 at 2:53 pm
I’m surprised by the information that the Chief Justice (and her husband) shared horse-racing interests “until recently” with a fellow Judge of the Supreme Court.
Were such mutual interests shared at the time of Justice Wilson’s appointment to the Supreme Court in December 2007?
Vote:April 10th, 2010 at 5:06 pm
What influence did Margaret Wilson have over his appointment, that’s what I want to know and don’t merely give me a run-down on the published rules give me the actual truth.
Poor bastard, tainted the Supreme Court in its first innings over a measly $250k.
I say, what a rotter. Toodle pip.
Vote:April 10th, 2010 at 5:14 pm
How the hell does a Judge get to owe $250,000 to a QC? Don’t we pay these turkeys enough?
Dig deeper folks!
Vote:April 10th, 2010 at 5:35 pm
And then on musing on this all day, the Horse Racing angle begins to itch. All these judges and lawyers united through horse racing, and then prior to the last election there was the intervention of Winston Peters as Minister of Racing, and some questioned activities with various owners and trainers.
Maybe we are reachying the outer perimeter of a Royal Commission of Enquiry??
Vote:April 10th, 2010 at 6:30 pm
“Maybe we are reaching the outer perimeter of a Royal Commission of Enquiry??”
Or maybe he’ll just quietly fade away with nothing but a tax-free judicial pension to support him. Poor bastard.
Vote:April 10th, 2010 at 9:55 pm
don’t get it, it is only 250k.
This guy must have earnt a crap load to get to where he was. 250k is pocket change.
Vote:April 12th, 2010 at 4:02 pm
The judiciary, the Crown and the Human Rights Commission are hiding a legal argument from New Zealand . This covert application was achieved with an omission from a judgment against Easton , 10 February 2010 by Justice Robert Dobson.
It is not the only serious omission from proceedings in the judgment where Justice Dobson also protected a demonstrably poor decision (made in part without evidence before the Court) by the Chief High Court judge Justice Anthony Randerson. For the purpose of this communication I will not pursue this matter in this forum and rely that the matter will be fully ventilated through my complaint against Justice Dobson to the Judicial Conduct Commissioner.
The argument to be considered by the public is whether or not a child is protected under family status from discrimination, and if not why not?
New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990 No 109 (as at 03 September 2007), Public Act
s6 Interpretation consistent with Bill of Rights to be preferred
s28 Other rights and freedoms not affected
Human Rights Act 1993 No 82 (as at 01 October 2008), Public Act
s21 Prohibited grounds of discrimination
Vote:April 12th, 2010 at 4:03 pm
More information on Justice Wilson: kiwisfirst.co.nz
Vote: