Mellis Napier has big effect on national banking; relaxes judges' life as South Australian chief justice (1942-67)
Mellis Napier chaired the federal royal commission into the nation's monetary and bank system in 1935.
Image by Burnell Studio, courtesy State Library of South Australia
(Thomas John) Mellis Napier succeeded George Murray as chief justice of South Australia in 1942.
He ran a relaxed court, allowing judges to appear in the streets without traditional top hats, frock coats and silver-topped canes – and to dine, smoke and have their hair cut in public places. Following Murray's example, he lunched with his puisne judges every weekday to discuss cases.
Napier’s open friendly – even fun – manner among his judicial colleagues has been suggested as the reason that he wasn’t overruled on appeal for two decades. But senior counsel did go over Napier’s head to the high court and privy council – where Napier was mostly upheld.
Napier was as one of Adelaide great outsiders. He was the son of the Dr Alexander Napier who was ostracised by Adelaide “society” for ignoring a South Australian branch of the British Medical Association black ban in 1896 and helping to keep the Adelaide Hospital open. In 1898, Mellis Napier was articled to the law firm of Charles Cameron Kingston, the premier who’d inflamed the Adelaide Hospital 1890s dispute.
Napier attributed Kingston’s training to his later success in drafting statues such as South Australia’s Justices Act (1921), Evidence Act (1925) and a new Supreme Court Act (1926). Napier studied law at Adelaide University and was admitted to the bar in 1903 and joined A.J. McLachlan in a partnership. Napier was noticed as junior counsel for the plaintiff in Billiet v. Commercial Bank of Australasia.. Study and painstaking preparation saw his rapid rise at the bar.
Besides working with Gynn, Parsons & McEwin (later Baker and Barlow), Napier also lectured (1921-22) part time and examined at Adelaide University’s law school. In 1921, he took silk. He handled briefs from the crown solicitor for Henry Barwell’s government and in 1924 was appointed a supreme court judge. He was noted for erudite displays in equity and testamentary cases but better known for his view that the law must be adaptable and “a servant of the people”.
Labor Prime minister Joe Lyons in 1935 picked Napier as chairman of royal commission in Australia’s monetary and bank systems. Not endearing himself to conservatives, Napier’s commission recommended 30 regulations brought in by federal treasurers between 1939 and 1959.
When he succeeded George Murray as chief justice of South Australia in 1942, Napier also took on the role of lieutenant governor and acting governor of South Australia with seriousness and perhaps relish.
Napier was criticised for being on the royal commission into the 1959 trial of Rupert Max Stuart, an Aboriginal man convicted of the rape and murder of a nine-year-old girl near Thevenard. This is because Napier had presided over Stuart’s full-court appeal. During that appeal, Napier, on the morning his wife had a stroke, lost patience with Stuart's counsel for relentless cross examining. Premier Tom Playford finally commuted Stuart’s death sentence and the royal commission found a new trial was unwarranted.
Napier often found himself in the minority among new colleagues on the full court in the 1960s. But the high court and the privy council almost always upheld his judgements. Some were adopted by English judges as proper developments of the common law.