Talk:Public Trustee (New Zealand)

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I have started this article, but obviously it is a work in progress. Winstonwolfe 02:33, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] The following anon post was removed from the article

"Before the Government could declare that the Public Trust Office and it's accumulated assets were in fact the property of Government and not property of the tens of thousands of clients since 1873, there was the need for a case in the High Court to ascertain ownership.

The Barrister handling the case for the " client" v The Crown (PTO) mishandled the case and effectively handed the PTO to the Government on a plate.

The New Zealand Trustees Association approached the Barrister at an early stage in proceedings to represent the clients as one entity, to be the client.

The Barrister refused the offer, for what reasons we can only surmise.

The High Court found in favour of the Crown, the Barrister appealed only to get the same result.

The Barrister then sought leave to go to the Privy Council.

The Barrister was effectively laughed out of Court! To proceed to the Privy Council you need instruction from your client,'the Barrister had no client during the entire proceedings'. End of case and we would expect end of a Barristers career.

The clients of the PTO since 1873 were never heard in the case. The proceedings were farcical.

SOURCE: Errol Anderson. NZTA Executive Officer 1996-"

COMMENT

These views are interesting and would benefit from being more coherently expressed. As it stands they are clearly not able to be included in the main article, (see policy guidelines on point of view, referencing, non-encylopedic material, and original research. It would be helpful if the contributor could providea source where these views have been published elsewhere, so the final article could include a non-pov recounting of this as the opinion of some commentators on the case.

In the mean time rather than delete this material, I have placed ite on the talk page, where it is acceptable.

As i suspect the author will question my impartiality, for the record, own opinion, for the little that it is worth, is that the concept of "ownership" was never considered properly when the office was created, in equity the value of the office was an asset which should be divided proportionately according to relative contribution amongst those owed a fidociary duty by Public Trust, (such as beneficiaries of the estates), however the economic real politick was suh a return would be an impossible bureaucratic nightmare, and vesting ownership of the office in the people of New Zealand (via the common fund) was a reasonable approximation. Rather than stretching common law and reason in the courts, I think the best course of action would have been to pass legislation, however unfortuinately it appears this was not politically acceptable. Winstonwolfe 03:11, 3 September 2007 (UTC)