The Booth v Frippery case involving a fruit farmer accused of contravening the Nature Conservation Act by killing flying foxes on electric grids may be sent to retrial. The bench of the Court of Appeal heard the case on 27 February 2006 and reserved its judgement.
The three judges hearing the case decided there were not sufficient findings of fact in the original judgement by Judge Pack for them to make orders, so if the appeal is won it will be sent back to the Planning and Environment Court for retrial. There was some argument heard on whether it should be sent back to the original judge.
Wildlife Queensland says......
Now that the appeal has been heard, we are optimistic that the original judgement will be overturned. However, it is disappointing that a win by Dr Booth in this court will mean the trial will be reheard and yet more community resources contributed to enforcing the law. It should be a straightforward legal matter that a fruit grower who has admittedly killed thousands of flying foxes (without a permit) should be held liable for those deaths. We hope justice will prevail.
'While it's great the community now has the capacity to take on such cases under 3rd party rights (used for the first time in this case), I hope we can soon move beyond the need to have to spend community resources in stopping such blatant breaches of the law,' said Dr Carol Booth, the plaintiff in the case.
'It's time to bring down the grids so that we can all move on. We need to put an absolute stop to such barbaric and primitive approaches to farming,' she added.
Background information on the Booth vs Frippery case.
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Wildlife Queensland - March 2006 |
