Underhill v R [2015] NZCA 156 (11 May 2015)

Last Updated: 28 May 2015

IN THE COURT OF APPEAL OF NEW ZEALAND
CA549/2014 [2015] NZCA 156
BETWEEN	WAYNNE UNDERHILL Appellant
AND	THE QUEEN Respondent

Hearing:	22 April 2015
Court:	White, Cooper and Keane JJ
Counsel:	Appellant in person Z R Hamill for Respondent
Judgment:	11 May 2015 at 2.30 pm

JUDGMENT OF THE COURT

1. Application for special leave to appeal declined.

2. The applicant must pay costs of $226.

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REASONS OF THE COURT

(Given by Keane J)

[1] On 7 August 2013, Waynne Underhill was issued with three notices alleging infringements that day against the Land Transport Act 1998: not displaying on his car or truck a current inspection certificate, operating it unlicensed, and failing to produce his driver’s licence.
[2] On 22 August 2013 these notices were upheld by a Community Magistrate in the Thames District Court, and on 14 November 2013 that decision was upheld on appeal by a District Court Judge in Hamilton. On 1 July 2014 his appeal against sentence was dismissed in the High Court at Hamilton. Goddard J described his grounds of appeal, which were those he had twice advanced without success in the District Court, as “utterly without merit”.
[3] Mr Underhill now seeks special leave to appeal to this Court and must establish that his proposed grounds of appeal involve a question of law of general or public importance or that for some other reason his appeal is one this Court ought to decide.^[1]
[4] In the Courts below Mr Underhill did not deny that he had infringed the Land Transport Act in the three ways set out in the notices. Nor does he do so in this application. He contended then, as he does now, that the Land Transport Act is without effect, as is every statute passed by the New Zealand Parliament. Parliament, he contends, does not have the ability to make laws that s 15 of the Constitution Act 1986 says it has. That Act itself is without effect.
[5] This challenge to the sovereignty of the New Zealand Parliament, as Mr Underhill was told in each of the Courts below, and has been told many times before, cannot possibly succeed. As he was most recently told by this Court when it declined him special leave to appeal last year, “our courts are bound to accept the validity of Acts of Parliament”.^[2] In that decision this Court declined Mr Underhill special leave to appeal on essentially the same question of law he seeks to pursue now.
[6] On that application Mr Underhill contended that the Constitution Act was without effect because the New Zealand Constitution Act 1852 (Imp), which it in part repealed, had been wrongly described as a 1952 Act in a legal dictionary and a Canterbury Law Review article.^[3] He now contends that the 1852 Act must be a fiction because he has been unable to obtain a copy of it from England. It is not a fiction. It is to be found in three reprint series of the New Zealand Statutes.^[4]
[7] The application for special leave to appeal is declined.
[8] Mr Underhill, we accept, is sincere in his challenges to the validity of the laws of New Zealand. But they have now become an abuse of the Court’s process. On this present application he is ordered to pay costs of $226.

Solicitors:
Crown Law Office, Wellington for Respondent

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^[1] Summary Proceedings Act 1957, s 144(3); Waller v Hider [1997] NZCA 221; [1998] 1 NZLR 412 (CA) at 413; [2014] NZCA 199 at [6].

^[2] Underhill v R [2014] NZCA 228 at [8] citing R v Mitchell CA68/04, 23 August 2004 at [14].

^[3] Underhill v R, above n 2, at [6]–[7].

^[4] The Public Acts of New Zealand (1908–1931) 1 at 993; The New Zealand Statutes Reprint (1908–1957) 11 at 115; Reprinted Statutes of New Zealand (1982) 10 at 453.