Sometimes, law starts like a rumour. Justice Jeffries hints that the common law might be about to give birth to another tort. Justice Holland has heard the pregnancy gossip, too, and hopes it's true, but he's not absolutely sure about it.
The Court of Appeal refuses to rule it out, and in its dignified and circumspect manner, nods its approval towards the prospective parents.
Meanwhile, Justice Gallen starts speculating about what the baby will look like. And this year, Justice Nicholson bought some baby booties.
There is no longer any doubt about it: the tort of invasion of privacy has been born.
Mother and child are both healthy.
Over the years, the common law (that's the part of the law made by judges rather than Parliament) has reared many bonny causes of action, including nuisance, trespass, defamation and, quite recently, negligence.
In modern times, though, judges have usually preferred to practise safe lex - law-making that doesn't produce new progeny, just fatherly corrections to already-born torts to keep them on the straight and narrow.
But should anyone be tempted to regard the common law as washed up, the birth of the tort of invasion of privacy is evidence of its virility.
This new tort is not to be confused with the Privacy Act, which was fathered by Parliament and basically sets out statutory rules governing the handling of information held by public and private agencies. It doesn't apply to the media in its news-gathering activities.
Torts are about obligations invented by judges and imposed on us. Here, they have invented a duty not to publicly disclose sensitive private facts in a manner which would be highly offensive to ordinary people, unless there's an overwhelming public interest.
And it clearly applies to the media.
Judges in the United States have recognised privacy for years. (Over there the law was kick-started, believe it or not, by an article in an academic journal.)
English judges, on the other hand, have refused to recognise it at all, even when some sleazy journalists sneaked into a hospital to interview actor Gordon Kaye (of 'Allo 'Allo fame) while he was recovering from a horrible car accident that left him with head and brain injuries.
So in 1986, when Des Tucker rushed to the courts in New Zealand to try to stop the media publishing details about his former convictions for indecency with boys, his prospects were not hot.
But Justice Jeffries and Justice McGechan were sympathetic. Tucker's health was precarious - he needed a heart-transplant operation, and was appealing to the public for donations. His doctor said if the news got out, the stress of the publicity could kill him.
So without finally deciding there was a law of privacy - or whether it applied in this case - Justice Jeffries said it was at least arguable, and he barred the defendants from publishing the information.
(It got out anyway, when a radio station aired the details, so Justice McGechan said it was pointless to continue the injunction.)
Thus was the law conceived. Although the judges tried to dress up their reasoning, saying privacy is really very similar to another established tort (the intentional infliction of emotional distress), citing American decisions, and emphasising that the law was not settled or firmly established, there is no doubt that they invented something that didn't exist before.
And each time it has been mentioned by another judge, the new tort's foothold in New Zealand's law has became firmer.
It has been used to stop Television New Zealand airing a story about an American girl caught up in a custody battle, and the Herald from publishing the name of a man being investigated by the Serious Fraud Office.
In the latest case, the Sunday Star-Times has been prevented from publishing information that "P," a high-profile person, was once in a psychiatric institution.
Some commentators have called that case a monstrous attack on free speech.
I can't say that I agree. There is no evidence that P's on-the-job competence is affected.
There seems to be no real public interest in the information. And the judge left the door open for the paper to come back if circumstances change.
Sure, it's surprising that Justice Nicholson barely mentioned the Bill of Rights Act, but this limitation on free speech can easily be justified under the bill's principles.
Privacy has been argued only half a dozen times since 1986. This baby tort may yet grow up to be a brat. But at the moment it looks pretty cute to me.
sxprice@hotmail.com
<i>Dialogue:</i>Steven Price
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