Precedent patterns in the New Zealand Court of Appeal

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to examine patterns of precedent in the New Zealand Court of Appeal. This involves two things - first of all an attempt to see what patterns emerge from an examination of the cases decided by the Court and secondly to ascertain the attitude of the Court to particular problems of precedent that have arisen. It is the second and more specific of these problems that forms the basis of the discussion that follows, the general patterns being left to emerge as the discussion proceeds. Is the New Zealand Court of Appeal bound by its own prior decisions? If so, are the exceptions to that rule the same as they are in England? To what extent does the New Zealand Court of Appeal follow the English Court of Appeal or the High Court of Australia? Are House of Lords decisions to be treated as "binding" in New Zealand? These are among the specific questions to which answers have been sought in this thesis. The discussion that follows is based on an examination of the relevant reported decisions of the New Zealand Court of Appeal since 1930. This date provides a convenient starting point for several reasons. It allows discussion of a few leading pre-war cases on precedent - in particular cases decided before the English Court of Appeal finally decided that it was bound by its own prior decisions. At the same time, to begin the discussion at this point is to begin at a time when the New Zealand Court of Appeal has reached a fair degree of maturity and has the benefit of a large number of precedents of its own.