Farmers take wool fight back to court

A group of Saxon merino wool growers want a Supreme Court decision against them recalled because they say one of the judges broke the law.

Justice Bill Wilson is a co-shareholder and director in a thoroughbred company with Alan Galbraith, QC, who represented the Wool Board in a dispute with the growers over wool levies.

The growers lost the dispute, and now claim Wilson should have declared his directorship of the company to the Chief High Court Judge.

Their application for a recall follows the Supreme Court's decision last month that there was no bias in Wilson sitting on an Appeal Court hearing of the dispute.

The Saxmere Company, The Escorial Company and two other representatives of Saxon merino growers partially won a High Court case against the Wool Board Disestablishment Company (DisCo) in 2005.

At issue was the Wool Board's refusal to provide funding for Saxmere and wool marketing organisations.

In 2007 DisCo appealed and won.

The growers then applied to the Supreme Court to have the Appeal Court decision set aside on the basis of Wilson's involvement with Galbraith in the Waikato stud farm Rich Hill.

But the Supreme Court rejected the claim, saying it was "unable to find any factor in the shared land-owning and racehorse activities that an observer reasonably could consider more likely to give rise to some unconscious preference in a particular case than would mere close personal friendship between a judge and a member of the bar".

The growers now say Wilson should have disclosed his directorship of Rich Hill under a section of the Judicature Act.

DisCo's parent company, the NZAX-listed Wool Equities, told the market last month that the Supreme Court decision would end all legal action against the former Wool Board if the Saxon growers did not take any further action.