Obituary: Sir Thaddeus McCarthy

Retired President of the Court of Appeal, died in Wellington, aged 93

Wellington's Sacred Heart Cathedral was packed this week as several hundred people paid final respects to one of New Zealand's most respected jurists.

Sir Thaddeus McCarthy, died last week in Island Bay's Home Of Compassion.

Sir Thaddeus McCarthy spent some 50 years in the law, 20 of them on the bench.

Sir Thaddeus (he was Thaddy in the legal fraternity) thought of himself as an ordinary man but he was not - he was an uncommon man with a common touch.

He was a member of the Wellington establishment, and a gifted orthodox jurist with a remarkable range of friends in many fields.

It's said that what distinguished him from some members of the bench was his determination to make complex matters plain so people without his immense legal knowledge were able to digest them. He viewed it as a public duty and in a sense, he provided what some people refer to today as customer service.

His language was crystal clear, his directions exemplary and his written judgments evidence that he was a stickler for common usage.

Sir Thaddeus was as critical of his own work as he was of others' shortcomings.

No one left a court in which he sat without knowing what had gone on - plaintiffs and defendants knew they had been listened to.

While he didn't suffer fools and could be gruff with counsel whose drift seemed obscure or pedantic, he knew how to keep a tight rein on his own impulses.

He enjoyed ordinary pleasures. Away from the intensity of court work, he sailed on the Hauraki Gulf in cruising yachts for more than 20 years and only gave it up in his 80s.

He played golf at Heretaunga, in the Hutt Valley, and admitted he was hopeless.

Sir Thaddeus was unusually self-contained, and he was noted for his certainties as well as his ability to listen, then lead. It's doubtless one reason why governments appointed him to many Royal Commissions of inquiry.

At the age of 14, Sir Thaddeus was suddenly forced to find personal inner strengths when his father, a merchant of agricultural goods at Napier, died.

His mother had died when he was 10 so young McCarthy and his sister were alone, except for family members in Napier. He was sent to the new St Bede's College at Christchurch as a boarder.

They were difficult years for the youngster, who had set his heart on being a farmer.

In the Depression there was no chance of raising the money for him to go into farming, and his hopes were dashed for good when the Napier earthquake destroyed what remained of his family's thriving but uninsured business. He chose the law, instead, paying for its tertiary component from his own slim earnings as a law clerk.

"I never had a free education," he groused, though he was proud that he had paid his way.

Sir Thaddeus learned about leadership in war, and about being a good judge of character. He had been a captain in Wellington Fortress Command at the outset of the Second World War but was determined to get abroad.

General Bernard Freyberg, commander of the New Zealand Division, appointed his own officers in the field, so Sir Thaddeus resigned his commission and shipped out as an infantry private destined for the Italian campaign. He was 35.

The young Wellington barrister had to foot it with men from all walks of life. He was noticed, commissioned, then flung at the front as a platoon commander.

Infantrymen are traditionally unforgiving, but Sir Thaddeus quickly earned the respect of his men. He only left his platoon when he was wounded, and when he recovered he was appointed deputy Judge Advocate-General on General Freyberg's headquarters staff.

In 1956, as his career at the Bar was ending, he was unusually selected by the Crown as prosecutor in the trial of Walter James Bolton, a Wanganui farmer who poisoned his wife with arsenic.

Bolton was hanged in February, 1957 - the last person executed in New Zealand. Sir Thaddeus was appointed to the Supreme Court Bench the same year. He was named to the Court of Appeal in 1963, and was its president when he retired in 1976.

Sir Thaddeus had a long association with the press. As a young lawyer, he had earned extra income by sitting on the press bench in Wellington courts.

He had been keen on seeing a Press Council formed and, at the request of Neil Blundell, chairman of the company that at the time owned the Evening Post, made inquiries about the British Press Council while attending a sitting of the Privy Council in London.

In 1978 Sir Thaddeus was appointed chairman of the New Zealand Press Council. His tenure was noted for strong, well-tempered opinions.

He was knighted twice, and had numerous other accolades associated with his legal work. He was as proud, however, of his Order of New Zealand, bestowed in 1994, because it was for work that had nothing to do with the law but for his formative roles with the National Trust, and the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust.

Sir Thaddeus is survived by his three children, John, Brigid and Mary. His wife Joan and daughter Frances predeceased him.

He outlived many of his peers in the legal fraternity but his circle of friends was so wide that he was never able to disengage from Wellington life, nor from people who had known him in bitter struggles.

- NZPA