For your lockdown distraction. Ten questions per day. Posted in the morning before work. Answers added to the end of the post around 3pm (work dependent). (Let’s see if I actually remember to write ten today.)
1. Which former judge, while the Governor-General and therefore exempt from paying taxes, imported two Mercedes Benz cars to New Zealand for a personal tax benefit of $85,000 (having avoided import duties)?
2. Who was counsel for the respondent in the Privy Council hearing of Tukino v Aotea District Maori Land Board [1941] AC 308 (PC)?
3. In a case appearing at [1973] 1 NZLR 1, a tale of defamation is recorded and an unsuccessful attempt at invoking qualified privilege plays out. The judgment includes the amusingly quaint description of audiovisual technology from Haslam J that I’ve screenshotted below. Give it a few years and the defendant would have power and infamy, but in 1973 he was being stung $5000 for defaming someone. Who was the defendant?
4. What links a legal database; the 27th Attorney-General of New Zealand, who held the position from 2 November 1990 to 5 December 1997; the second President of the Court of Appeal; and one of the founding members of the Waitangi Tribunal, whose daughter is a current Family Court judge?
5. What is the northernmost District Court in New Zealand?
6. Whose appointment as a Supreme Court judge was held to be invalid by the Privy Council?
7. Which New Zealand head of bench had a former career as a flight attendant with Air New Zealand?
8. Whenever I hear the term “a ‘but for’ test” I think of the quote from A Man For All Seasons: “It profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world … but for _______?” What is the missing word from the quote?
9. Who is hiding in Honduras, a desperate man?
10. What was the last year to have a single volume of NZLRs published?
Answers:
1: Sir David Beattie. 2: Denning KC. 3: It was Muldoon, a sort of spiritual prequel to Fitzgerald v Muldoon. 4: The answers are Westlaw, Paul East, Sir Alfred North, and Laurie Southwick. 5: Kaitaia District Court. 6: That was Edwards J (Sir Worley Bassett Edwards) in Buckley v Edwards [1892] AC 387 (PC). 7: Chief Coroner Judge Deborah Marshall. 8: Wales! But for Wales? 9: Warren Zevon, in the song Lawyers, Guns and Money. 10: 1983.
Strictly obiter 