Courts hold the line against name suppression!
Thursday, July 7th, 2011The Supreme Court has just denied leave to appeal in a name suppression case. David Ingram Rowley and Barrie James Skinner have been charged with dishonest use of a document and perverting the course of justice. The trial is set for February next year. They were granted name suppression in the District Court. This was overturned in […]
Siemer in contempt
Thursday, July 7th, 2011Vince Siemer has been found in contempt of Court again for, well, for being in contempt of Court. In brazen defiance of a suppression order plastered all over the front of Winkelman J’s decision denying the Urewera defendants a jury trial, Vince posted the judgment on his website. The suppression order said: THIS JUDGMENT IS […]
Is Macsyna King being censored?
Thursday, June 30th, 2011No doubt you’ve heard that the upcoming Ian Wishart book by Macsyna King is being boycotted by a range of bookstores. Is this censorship, as some are claiming? No. Well, not really. Censorship is usually regarded as emanating from the state. There’s no law against stocking this book. There’s no legal penalty for doing so. […]
Corrections ban on Truth surely unlawful
Thursday, June 30th, 2011The Department of Corrections’ decision to ban the Truth from Auckland prison looks unlawful. And typical. The prison says the ban is based on the content of the paper’s coverage, not on the girly ads. It’s possible (but I would have thought very unlikely) that the ads might fall under the department’s ability to confiscate “objectionable” […]
Free speech vs privacy
Sunday, June 12th, 2011A New Mexico man puts up a billboard of himself holding the outline of a baby, saying: This Would Have Been a Picture Of My 2-Month Old Baby If The Mother Had Decided To NOT KILL Our Child! His ex-partner (who says she had a miscarriage not an abortion) sues for harrassment and invasion of […]
Sauce for the goose
Friday, June 10th, 2011Has anyone else twigged to the irony that the UK media have fought, tooth and nail, against Max Mosley’s attempt to force them to give advance notice to people whose privacy they plan to invade (which would give those people a chance to seek an injunction before the damage was done by publication)… at the […]
Darren Hughes’ accuser: will he be named?
Thursday, June 9th, 2011Now that the police have decided not to press charges against Darren Hughes, the obvious next question is whether his accuser can be named. For now, the answer is no. There is still an injunction in place. Someone will have to apply to court to have it lifted. Will the judge be sympathetic? I suspect […]
Hung: drawn and quartered
Monday, May 23rd, 2011The BSA’s decision on the Hung programme has been put to death by the High Court. (You might have thought this would be a judicial decision of public interest for the Courts of NZ website. Apparently not.) My article with Claudia Geiringer about the BSA and the Bill of Rights is cited again, perhaps not […]
Sign of the times
Monday, May 23rd, 2011Wouldn’t it be just like some smart-arse protester to sneak in at night and change the WELLYWOOD sign to something like SMELLYWORD? Not that I’m advocating that, you understand. It would be against the law.
Unbelievable
Saturday, May 21st, 2011Some readers have wondered whether I’m exaggerating when I accuse the British press of being incapable of reporting fairly about so-called super-injunctions. Here I offer Exhibit A: today’s Guardian story about a long-awaited and fascinating report by a committee headed by the Master of the Rolls on the issue of injunctions, super-injunctions and anonymity orders. The […]
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