Legal advice costs

Joe made this Official Information request to Hutt City Council

The request was successful.

From: Joe

Dear Hutt City Council,

I request all information about Mayor Wallace seeking legal advice as indicated in this news article: https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politic....

In particular I'd like to know if Mr Wallace sought legal advice, the firm he sought that advice from, what that advice was, and the cost to ratepayers.

Yours faithfully,

Joe

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From: Hutt City Council - Acknowledgements
Hutt City Council


Attachment DOC 18 29783 Acknowledgement Letter OIR Joe Legal Advice Cost CLEAN.pdf
207K Download View as HTML


Dear Sir/Madam

 

Attached is an acknowledgement of your recent Official Information
Request.

 

Kind regards

 

Corporate Information 

Hutt City Council

IMPORTANT: The information contained in this e-mail message may be legally
privileged or confidential. The information is intended only for the
recipient named in the e-mail message. If the reader of this e-mail
message is not the intended recipient, you are notified that any use,
copying or distribution of this e-mail message is prohibited. If you have
received this e-mail message in error, please notify the sender
immediately. Thank you.

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Mr Rodgers left an annotation ()

I suspect this won't go too far. The requester is asking for a copy of legal advice and the OIA allows for information to be withheld to "maintain legal professional privilege".

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From: Bradley Cato
Hutt City Council

Hi Joe

I refer to your information request below.

You have linked a newspaper article from 1 August 2017 and I assume you are seeking information on this part of it:

"Josh Briggs, however, raised a procedural motion that threw the meeting into chaos, with Wallace seeking legal advice after he was told he had not followed the appropriate procedure."

This advice was sought from the then General Manager of Governance and Regulatory, an employee of Council and a practising lawyer. So there was no external advice sought and no additional cost associated with it.

The Mayor was trying to have a resolution passed that stopped meals being provided to councillors before Council meetings. Cr Briggs raised a point of order, as a councillor had already put that motion to Council recently and it had been defeated. There is a rule in the Standing Orders that states a similar motion to one recently defeated cannot be put before Council again, within a certain timeframe. The issue took up a bit of time and the Mayor eventually moved on, without the resolution being passed.

Our Council meetings are live streamed and then saved so you can watch the meeting here, if you like: https://livestream.com/huttcitycouncil

The catering issue has since been resolved, with councillors now paying for their meals.

Regards
Brad

Bradley Cato
General Counsel

Hutt City Council, 30 Laings Road, Private Bag 31912, Lower Hutt 5040, New Zealand
T 04 570 6880, M 027 542 8175, W www.huttcity.govt.nz, F www.facebook.com/huttcitycouncil

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