Tag Archives: Court Action

The NZ Climate Science Coalition’s opponents have attacked it for creating a Trust (the NZ Climate Science Education Trust, NZCSET) for the sole purpose of unfairly (perhaps, in the opinion of some, unlawfully) avoiding costs if they lost the court case against NIWA.

However, there are sensible reasons for creating a legal entity to take someone to court. One of the first questions a judge asks is “who are the parties?” If that simple question cannot be answered by naming a legal entity the case doesn’t get off the ground and the judge just gets annoyed.

So, although the NZCSC did the scientific work in challenging NIWA’s techniques, it couldn’t take the court proceedings. An unincorporated association cannot sue or be sued, as it has no legal existence separate from its multifarious members. Continue Reading →

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NIWA displays an unattractive arrogance toward challengers.

The question arises, m’lud, of costs

Unaffordable justice is not justice.

But before payment ever becomes an issue, the very availability of a Court of law is vital, for it guarantees that the ordinary citizen may have his grievances examined by a disinterested judge. We shouldn’t underestimate the power of the unperturbed mind to resolve disputes, remedy wrongs and instil peace; it’s fair to say that nothing else can.

The significance of the Court’s availability increases with the increasing power of one’s adversary, until the adversary is the Crown itself, when the importance of an open Court surpasses everything. For in battling the Crown or the State one stands to lose everything, the combat is so unequal. Only the judge stands between the citizen and the Crown. Outside the courtroom the citizen would be crushed without thought, but before the judge the agent of the Crown will discover that he meets an equal Continue Reading →

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To be a judge in New Zealand is to wield substantial power. Here we have evidence that judicial power can reverse the meaning of a word.

The judgement in our case against NIWA said at paragraph 9:

Both the original statement of claim and the first amended statement of claim were prolix.

The word “prolix” comes from the Latin “prolixus”, which means “extended” (literally “poured out”) or “courteous, favourable”. It has come to mean “tediously lengthy, bombastic, long-winded, verbose, wordy.”

It’s not used as a compliment. When a judge describes your submission as prolix he’s saying “your explanatory skills are poor, you waffle and you have wasted much of my time.” Continue Reading →

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Here’s some good news: Mr Justice Venning said today that he intends granting my request to view the Court documents.

The other party to gain access is APNZ News Service, through Matthew Theunissen – that’s the Herald’s agency.

Because the file is in his Chambers and is the subject of a reserved decision, we must wait until the decision is delivered before we get access to it. I’m looking forward to studying the transcript because I missed a lot by not attending all the hearing. I’m not sure there’s much of interest in the other exhibits, but of course I haven’t seen them yet!

The Registrar’s office told me none of the material exists in electronic form. So that’s a shame – it means anything I want to post online I’ll have to type or convert with an OCR program. So let’s hope the quality is good.

It sounds as though I’ll get access to the whole suitcase full but I might have to be selective in posting only the juicy pieces online. And I won’t see the file for perhaps two or three months anyway.

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The High Court at Auckland, constructed as the Supreme Court from 1865-1868, photographed in 1869. Among New Zealand’s earliest structures — though the discussions and decisions it hosts can be expected to last much longer than the building.

Today we bring you more details of the High Court hearing from two weeks ago, including a surprising admission by NIWA, who practically discard the “peer review” provided for them by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BoM).

In various previous posts (NZ sceptics v. NIWA – summary of case, More about the NZ temperature record, What warming, Incredible sham from NIWA and others) we summarise the *Coalition’s case against the Seven-Station Series (7SS).

Since 1999 this temperature series has been providing the basis for New Zealand’s climate change policies, but its major role has been to be presented whenever a public body needs official evidence of the country’s temperature history.

Until we investigated, NIWA’s web site did not disclose that the temperature readings had been adjusted. We only found out when we went to graph the data they provided – our graph was wildly different from theirs and showed no warming. Continue Reading →

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The hearing finished about 3:30 pm today, Mr Justice Venning reserved his decision and the legal team and I had a few beers afterwards.

There’s little sense of what the decision might be. I’ll post a fuller report of the day’s session tomorrow.

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