Registrar of Private Investigators and Security Guards subject to Judicial Review

The Registrar of Private Investigators and Security Guards (PISG), Gary Harrison, is the defendant in judicial review proceedings as a result of the manner in which he dismissed a complaint made by Bruce Stuart-Menteath about Provision Security Ltd (PSL).

Stuart-Menteath's original 2007 complaint arose as a result of PSL employees conducting covert surveillance for Solid Energy Ltd on Department of Conservation land at Mt Augustus, north east of Westport, without authority. He alleges that they refused to provide identification, claimed they had authority that in law they did not have and operated without the required certificates of approval.

Filed in the High Court at Christchurch, Stuart-Menteath's judicial review claim alleges that Harrison's decision was illegal in that in reaching it he failed to apply non-discretionary provisions of the Private Investigators and Security Guards Act, that he failed to apply the principles of natural justice to the hearing process and otherwise abused his discretionary powers.

The role of the Registrar PISG is to administer the Private Investigators and Security Guards Act, established for the purpose of ensuring that applicants for a licence to operate as a private investigator or security guard are of a fit and proper character and to provide for hearings into complaints. It was intended to provide some protection for the public from abuses of the Act by unscrupulous operators. However, Stuart-Menteath alleges that that has not happened in this instance.

As a result of Stuart-Menteath's 2007 complaint Harrison advised him that a hearing would be held on 22 February 2008, but at the last moment brought it forward to the 21st and gave Stuart-Menteath only 2 ½ hours notice of the change. As a result Stuart-Menteath was unable to attend, but Harrison refused to allow him to be heard the next day as originally notified, dismissed his complaint and awarded $1500 costs against him. Provision Security then initiated bankruptcy proceedings against Stuart-Menteath as a means of recovering the costs.

However, the PISG Act specifically states that the Registrar PISG is required to give no less than 14 days notice of a hearing. Harrison made no mention of that detail in his 2008 Oral Decision but instead relied on a note he included in the notice of hearing that advised the hearing may be brought forward, but which failed to specify a date or time. Regardless, Stuart-Menteath claims that the 2 ½ hours notice was utterly unacceptable.

Stuart-Menteath further claims that the pre-hearing process was not conducted in a balanced and proper manner. For example, whilst Harrison consulted with Provision Security about bringing the hearing forward, he failed to include Stuart-Menteath in the discussion and then, without any evidence to the contrary, rejected Stuart-Menteath's claim that he was unable to attend on the new date.

Stuart-Menteath also claims that other provisions of the PISG Act obliged Harrison to not only hear his complaint on the notified date, but to find Provision Security guilty of breaches of the Act, given that it had already admitted as much in evidential statements it had filed before the hearing date.

It seems somewhat inconsistent with the Act to award costs against a complainant who undoubtedly would have been successful if he had been given a fair opportunity to attend a hearing.

A hearing date for the Judicial Review has yet to be notified.

For further information contact Bruce Stuart-Menteath at b.menteath@inet.net.nz