High Court of Australia
High Court of Australia Kitto, Taylor, Menzies, Windeyer and Owen JJ. Pedersen v Young [1964] HCA 28
ORDER Demurrer allowed with costs.
Cur. adv. vult.
The following written judgments were delivered:—
May 11 Kitto J.
This is a demurrer in an action pending in the High Court. The action is for damages for personal injuries which the plaintiff alleges he sustained by the negligence of the defendant in a road accident in Queensland. It is brought in this Court as an action between residents of different States: The Constitution, s. 75 (iv.).
The action was commenced in the New South Wales Registry of the Court more than three years after the date alleged in the statement of claim as the date of the injury. The defendant by his defence sets up this fact as an answer to the action, relying upon the provisions of The Law Reform (Limitation of Actions) Act of 1956 of the State of Queensland. The relevant provision is in s. 5 and so far as material is in these terms: "Notwithstanding anything contained in any other Act or law or rule of law to the contrary, actions for damages for negligence where damages claimed by the plaintiff for the negligence consist of or include damages in respect of personal injury to any person shall be commenced within three years after the cause of such actions arose, but not after". The plaintiff demurs, contending that the statute affords no defence to the action.
Upon ordinary principles of statutory interpretation it is necessary to understand s. 5 as limited to prescribing a time limit for the commencement of actions in Queensland. A faint attempt was made to attribute to it a wider operation, by force of s. 118 of the Constitution, which requires full faith and credit to be given throughout the Commonwealth to the laws of every State. But that section takes State laws as it finds them. It obviously does not give a Queensland law relating to the commencement of actions in Queensland an application in New South Wales to the commencement of actions there.
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