Supreme Court Says ‘Judges Are Not Entitled to Pick and Choose Their Cases’, Refuses to Hear Appeal

The Supreme Court of New Zealand refused to hear an appeal alleging improper assignment of a proceeding, despite its earlier observation that judges are not entitled to pick and choose their cases.

On 27 February 2015, the Supreme Court of New Zealand delivered the landmark judgment [2015] NZSC 15 in which the country’s highest court refused to hear the application for leave to appeal SC125/2014 brought by a man who can be referred to only as Mr N.

According to the court documents, Mr N sought to challenge the dismissal of his civil appeal by the panel of Justices Rhys Harrison, Mark Cooper and Lowell Goddard. Mr N alleged, among other numerous things, that Harrison J assigned the appeal to himself in breach of both the Judicature Act and the Court of Appeal’s own procedures, as well as contrary to the fundamental rule against bias previously cited by the Supreme Court as “Judges are not entitled to pick and choose their cases”.

The Supreme Court was laconic in its decision on Mr N’s application, saying that no tenable basis was raised to challenge the Court of Appeal’s judgment. Neither Courts’ judgments mention either the allegation of the improper assignment by Harrison J nor the rules of law Mr N relied upon.

Human rights barrister Dr Frank Deliu of the Justitia Chambers comments “it is one thing for the Court of Appeal to disregard its organic law and Gazette procedures, but it is another entirely for the Supreme Court to just ignore the issue. It leaves a very bad impression and it could unfortunately be perceived as a whitewash. The New Zealand judicial system was gravely chastised by the Privy Council in Taito v R for systematic breaches of fundamental human rights and so our Courts need to be extra diligent to avoid even the perception of impropriety in light of that international embarrassment”.

Mr N declined to comment on his next steps. He has other related proceeding pending in the Court of Appeal.
Copies of the court documents can be found at www.fairhearing.info.

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