I think this behaviour contradicts the manual which strongly links ls-tree to ls(1):
?0[steffen@wales ]$ ls NEWSS
ls: cannot access 'NEWSS': No such file or directory
?2[steffen@wales ]$ git ls-tree --name-only master NEWSS
?0[steffen@wales ]$ ls NEWS
NEWS
?0[steffen@wales ]$ git ls-tree --name-only master NEWS
NEWS
?0[steffen@wales ]$
Ciao.
--steffen

