Appeal fails but gang member still squatting
The Court of Appeal has thrown out gang member Kevin Moore’s latest bid to continue his illegal occupation of Māori land in Taranaki, but whether the ruling will finally dislodge him is unclear.
For the past 11 years Moore, a once feared and still notorious Black Power member, has occupied a seaside section of the Rohutu Block in Waitara, illegally constructing a house there a decade ago.
The site is Māori freehold land managed by the Rohutu Block Trust and their legal advisers under the Te Ture Whenua Māori Land Act 1993.
In the past, one of the trustees of the land stated Moore had turned the small community of about 30 homes at Rohutu from “low key and harmonious” to “anxious and afraid”.
Despite his negative impact, numerous attempts to have Moore evicted have failed to move the gang member.
The long legal battle to have him removed has plodded along, with Moore using various approaches to ward off eviction.
In 2015, following a hui facilitated by the Māori Land Court, the trust proposed a three-month lease, which Moore did not indulge.
The next year, trustees applied to the Māori Land Court for an order determining Moore had no right to own the trust’s land and was trespassing.
In response, Moore filed an application to determine his status as tangata whenua and that he was a beneficiary of the block.
In 2018, the applications came before Judge Harvey in the Māori Land Court.
At the hearing, in response to a suggestion from Judge Harvey, Moore chose not to pursue his original application and instead seek a correction of the 1958 partition order that omitted Moore’s tupuna from the list of beneficiaries when the block was created.
The block was part of an 1884 Crown grant of land to 10 named Māori proprietors.
In 1958, a partition order was made by the Māori Land Court in respect of the same block. The relevant beneficiaries identified in the partition order were descendants of most of the original owners named in the Crown grant, but did not include Moore or his tupuna.
Judge Harvey ruled in favour of the Rohutu Trust, requiring Moore to get off the land, though this was not immediately enforced so Moore could pursue his application to the chief judge regarding the partition order.
A subsequent decision by Chief Judge Isaac in 2022 found no errors had been made in dismissing Moore’s claims he had ancestral ties to the land.
Moore lodged an appeal, arguing Judge Harvey’s suggestion he seek a correction of the partition order amounted to “official induced error”.
He also appealed that Chief Judge Isaac was wrong to find his application for a correction on the partition order did not extend to reviewing the owners list.
The Court of Appeal heard the case on March 13 and released its decision on April 16.
It found there was no basis for finding that Judge Harvey induced Moore into error.
It also found the block owners listed by the Crown were correct and that the “broader legislative history and framework“did not offer obvious support to the owners list being reviewed.