Pierson v New Zealand Food Safety Authority

The Court of Appeal of New Zealand considered an application by Robin Sharpe Pierson to recall a previous judgment in which the Court had declined to grant special leave to appeal. Pierson, the applicant, sought to challenge the decision of the New Zealand Food Safety Authority, the respondent, which had been upheld by the Court in a previous judgment. The case arose out of an alleged contravention of food safety regulations, leading to a prosecution in the District Court. Pierson sought to challenge the evidence given by the respondent's expert witness, Dr Cook, in relation to the level of contamination required to cause illness through the ingestion of contaminated food.

The primary legal issue before the Court was whether exceptional circumstances existed to justify recalling the previous judgment, which had declined to grant special leave to appeal. Pierson argued that a new decision of relevance had emerged, specifically the Court's decision in Wallace v R, which suggested that "bad science" could lead to an unsafe or wrong conviction. Pierson further contended that an exchange of emails between his brother and Dr Cook threw doubt upon the evidence given by Dr Cook at trial, and that this evidence should have been taken into account in the original hearing of the application for special leave.

The Court found that no exceptional circumstances were established to justify the recall of the judgment. The Court acknowledged that there was no further right of appeal available to Pierson, but determined that the application was essentially an attempt to revisit factual issues that had been fully canvassed at the original hearing of the application for special leave. The Court was not persuaded by the probative force of the affidavit provided by Pierson's brother, given the lack of technical expertise by the deponent, his lack of independence, and the equivocal nature of the material. The Court also found that the evidence was not fresh, as there was no reason why contrary expert evidence to that of Dr Cook could not have been led at trial.

The Court dismissed the application to recall the judgment, confirming that it would only exercise its exceptional jurisdiction to revisit its decisions in exceptional circumstances when required by the interests of justice. In this case, the Court found that no such exceptional circumstances existed, and that the application was an attempt to revisit factual issues that had already been considered in the original hearing.