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Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Director General of Health Ashley Bloomfield have regularly appeared to explain the block.
Two people who sued Jacinda Ardern, alleging that the coronavirus blockade was an illegal arrest, lost their case but obtained support for their concerns about the blockade’s legal basis.
The Court of Appeals on Friday ruled that the men’s circumstances now, at block level 3, did not amount to arrest.
But all three judges said the case had raised issues that could be examined in separate proceedings, perhaps at an urgent hearing.
The two laymen who argued the case had done so incorrectly, the court said. His full reasons are expected next week.
READ MORE:
* Coronavirus: Two launch appeals after losing lockdown lawsuits against Jacinda Ardern
* Coronavirus: Men lose lawsuits against Jacinda Ardern, Ashley Bloomfield over Covid-19 lockdown
* Coronavirus: Man’s lawsuit dismissed due to Covid-19 blocking restrictions
* Coronavirus: two lockdown claims illegally detain them, sue Jacinda Ardern
The President of the Court of Appeals, Judge Stephen Kos, said that the extraordinarily complex questions needed answers. He referred to an article that academics Andrew Geddis and Claudia Geiringer wrote in The Spinoff and a report from Parliament’s regulatory review committee that looks at government powers in emergency situations, which he said “hardly approved.”
It comes after Judge Mary Peters discovered in Superior Court last week that neither of them was in custody or, alternatively, any detention was legal.
On Friday, the two, who were described as associates, appealed the decision to the Court of Appeal.
They sued Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, Director General of Health Ashley Bloomfield and Director of Civil Defense Emergency Management Sarah Stuart-Black, for Bloomfield’s closing order of April 3 to prevent the spread of Covid-19, so everyone stays home except essential personal movement
The couple used an old legal process called habeas corpus to challenge what was alleged to be illegal detention.
What the two men were really trying to do was challenge the reasons for making the closing order, and habeas corpus was not the correct process to do it, the judge said.
Success would have meant that the entire population had been released from the constraints.
The Crown said the restrictions were significant, but they were never lifted.
Judge Peters agreed with the crown.
The freedom to exercise, go to a supermarket, talk to whomever they wanted, and access the Internet was very different from being in custody, which was necessary to meet the definition of detention.
And the coronavirus pandemic was an adequate legal basis to exercise emergency powers to restrict movement.
One of the men was alleged to have served a house arrest sentence in any event, although the man in question denied it.
That man had also said that the blockade violated guaranteed human rights, was unwarranted, and was done for strange reasons, such as to increase Ardern’s chances for reelection.
The judge said that a request for habeas corpus was not the correct way for those claims to be decided.
The judge also refused to delete the men’s names. Both said that publishing their names in the past had led to death threats, but the High Court judge, if that happened, was a matter for the police and was not a reason to suppress names in civil proceedings.
