Kurt John Owen v The Queen [2007] NZSC 102 is a decision of the Supreme Court of New Zealand handed down on 11 December 2007.

Courts had followed the letter of the law in maintaining the grounds as distinct, albeit with some overlap.

The Supreme Court found that it was time to cease the support of the distinction and that henceforth the touchstone for an appeal under this section would be unreasonableness.

[1] The court accepted the Court of Appeal's definition of unreasonableness in R v Munroe;[2] "A verdict will be deemed unreasonable where it is a verdict that, having regard to all the evidence, no jury could reasonably have reached to the standard of beyond reasonable doubt", with the minor alteration of expunging the word "deemed" as it indicated that a court might find a verdict unreasonable when it was not in fact.

[3] Applying this standard to the facts of Mr Owen's case the court found that the verdict which the jury had come to was in light of the evidence not unreasonable.