37. Rt HON SIR ARTHUR OWEN WOODHOUSE
President of the Court of Appeal, Royal Commissioner
18 July 1916, Napier – (15 April 2016, Auckland)
Owen Woodhouse is best known for chairing the Royal Commission on Personal Injury (universally known as the ‘Woodhouse Commission’) which recommended fault-free treatment and compensation for those suffering an accident. Especially because of this report, and his deliberations on matrimonial property, he is seen as an inventive Judge whose name has throughout the world been identified with enlightened reform. Born in Napier, he, like many lawyers of his generation, trained part-time (in Auckland) and did war service, including captaining a torpedo boat, liaising with the Yugoslav partisans, and acting as a naval attaché to the British Embassy in Belgrade, experiences which gave him an independence and confidence in himself and a faith in ordinary New Zealanders. His post-war legal career developed with a commitment to ‘decide cases upon the law as it has been developed and made applicable here for contemporary New Zealand needs and conditions.’ In 1973 he became a judge of the Court of Appeal (then the highest court in New Zealand) and its President (chairman) from 1981 to 1986. He also chaired an Australian enquiry recommending the ending of disparities between the way that victims of accident and sickness should be treated. He said ‘New Zealanders like to think they are good practical people, as they are, but I think they are also a caring community, though they don’t always say much about that. That scheme I tried to put together pulls those two qualities together.’