"It may be that there are some who would decry the importance which the courts attach to the observance of the rules of natural justice. 'When something is obvious,' they may say, 'why force everybody to go through the tiresome waste of time involved in framing charges and giving an opportunity to be heard? The result is obvious from the start.' Those who take this view do not, I think, do themselves justice. As everybody who has anything to do with the law well knows, the path of the law is strewn with examples of open and shut cases which, somehow, were not; of unanswerable charges which, in the event, were completely answered; of inexplicable conduct which was fully explained; of fixed and unalterable determinations that, by discussion, suffered a change. Nor are those with any knowledge of human nature who pause to think for a moment likely to underestimate the feelings of resentment of those who find that a decision against them has been made without their being afforded any opportunity to influence the course of events."
In this particular case something more should be said. The applicants contend that this is not simply a case where the conspiracy suggestion could not have been rebutted. They plead in their statement of claim that the Commissioner's findings to that effect are not based on evidence of probative value. Elsewhere in the present judgment we deal with aspects of these arguments. Here, dealing with principles, we add that fairness is not necessarily confined to procedural matters. It can have wider range. Remedies in this field are discretionary and the law not inflexible. If a party seeks to show not only that he did not have an adequate hearing but also that the evidence on which he was condemned was insubstantial, the Court is not compelled to shut its eyes to the state of the evidence in deciding whether, looking at the whole case in perspective, he has been treated fairly.
In a written synopsis of argument presented before this Court by counsel for Air New Zealand it was said that background matters had to be understood as they were entirely relevant to the complaints made by the applicants in the present proceedings. But that "the Applicants do not propose to canvass any factual matters which fall outside the range of their specified allegations". In regard to that last matter we emphasize again that this case (as counsel well realized) cannot be used to attack the Royal Commission findings as to the cause of the crash. On behalf of the applicants it was made clear nonetheless that their acceptance of the jurisdictional bar to such a challenge in the Courts did not mean and should not be used to draw any inference that they accepted the causation findings themselves (at least in the unqualified form in which they are set down in the Report). It is simply that they do all readily accept as they must that in no sense can these proceedings become an appeal against those findings. It is right to add that throughout the hearing in this Court that attitude has very properly been reflected in the submissions we heard. Thus the conclusions as to the cause of the crash must and do stand.