As expected, this morning’s judicial conference was very low key. Lawyers for all parties met with Justice Gendall at the High Court.
Statements of defence haven’t been filed yet and so the only decision made today was to convene another judicial conference when they’re in.
Taito Phillip Field is not above the law. He’s just a top chap who’s never done anything wrong. It says so here. DPF at Kiwiblog disagrees.
Reference: The Ingram Report (pdf).
Update (21/07/06): Fixed the Kiwiblog link.
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The timetable for this whole exercise is not yet fixed but there are a few dates that are certain.
The defendants have thirty days from the date that documents were served on them to file their statements of defence. These are due at the end of July.
On Monday 31st July there will be a judicial conference for the lawyers of both sides. I will be represented by Anthony Molloy, QC, the Labour Party will be represented by Hugh Rennie, QC, and the Attorney-General will be represented by Crown Law. The judicial conference will establish the timetable for the rest of the process and so I’ll know more after that.
No Right Turn points out that today is the Labour Party’s 90th birthday.
“Ninety years ago … left-wing leaders gathered … in Wellington to plan how best to … advance the interests of New Zealand’s working class.”
Nowadays of course they meet in Wellington to plan how best to advance the interests of New Zealand’s self-righteous, know-it-all, do-gooder class. Having become New Zealand’s major political party, their raison d’etre has become power for power’s sake.
The organisation that formerly claimed to represent the downtrodden and oppressed now behaves like a feudal lord. It seems that some animals are more equal than others.
Second story on the National Business Review website (and first under Politics) tonight is Clark Faces Legal Challenge on Election Spend. This is by far the most comprehensive piece to appear in the media since the case was filed.
There’s been a bit of commentary around the blogs about this case over the last few days (although some are studiously ignoring the whole thing). Rather than list every site as it appears, I’ll just refer to the Technorati search on the topic.