Report No. 51
26. Position in New Zealand and New South Wales.-
It appears that in New Zealand the counterpart of the Motor Insurers' Bureau will pay upto £ 7,500 to any one victim of an unidentified driver and upto £ 75,000 for any one such accident. In New South Wales, the unidentified driver is represented for the purposes of trial by an official called the Nominal Defendant, and the insurers pay out a claim on the basis of a judgment obtained against the Nominal Defendant (though here a plaintiff must show affirmatively what efforts have been made to trace the real driver and that these efforts have been unsuccessful).1 Several other developments have taken place in New Zealand, but they are not specially relevant to hit-and-run cases.
1. Hamish R. Gray Liability for Highway Accidents, (1964) 17 Current Legal Problems 127, 139, 140.
Back
