The Australian Professional Liability Blog
Stephen Warne on professional negligence, regulation and discipline around the world
I’m off to Bali and Java soon. An instructress too and as I gathered together for her some good places to stay in Bali today, I thought to share them with you; my other post about Bali is lost in the increasingly large archives. Brush up on the Schapelle Corby saga before you go to improve …
Continue reading “18 good places to stay in Bali, none of them in Kuta”
Update, 4 October 2008: Here’s an excellent article on Bali’s resurgent tourism and the environmental challenges it is posing, by The Age‘s Indonesia correspondent, Mark Forbes. Original post: This barrister is in Bali. So no new posts until the fury of deadlines which will unleash itself on me again on my return on 19 September …
Centenaries Noting that it was the centenary of Ulysses‘s publication as a book, I thought I would check my assumption that not much else really happened in 1922, except flappers and cocktails, as everyone congratulated themselves that the age of war had passed with the end of what was then known as The Great War. …
Continue reading “2022: Not Such a Good Year (historical context)”
Ukraine Many oligarchs in Russia have mysteriously died despite access to the best healthcare and serious security details, since around the time of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The BBC and the New York Times have each reported the US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff estimate that each of the Russians and the Ukrainians have suffered …
Pemuteran is a gently developed fishing village in the north-west of Bali, with a quiet and refined lassitude that I liked. It has spacious, elegant resorts which are currently great value, umbrageous trees on the sand, inexpensive guest houses and warungs, unbelievable snorkelling, and proximity to many activities associated with Bali’s sole national park. Not a …
People mainly governed by twits By February 2021 (when Australia’s vaccine roll-out commenced), half a million Americans had died from COVID. That was already more than had died in the world wars and the Vietnam War combined. In one week in September, more Floridians died from COVID than all the Australian deaths from COVID to that …
Death, crime and marriage Richie Benaud died. 501 Sydneysiders dressed up as Richie a few weeks ago in a weird tribute at the SCG test. Lee Kwan Yew and Malcolm Fraser died too. So did Bart Cummings, Harry Butler, and Alan Bond. So did a singer I liked a lot, Victor Démé from the country …
Continue reading “2015, not such a great year (part 2: death, crime, marriage, war)”
Happy new year, friends! Despite the discombobulation of having to find new chambers last year, I came away with a better feeling than I did about 2014 which (my thoughts on 2014 were here). I took a sabbatical which probably had a lot to do with it (just back today, really). That was pretty sweet. …
Continue reading “2015, not such a good year (part 1: aviation and environment)”
Russia Back, after that long excursion (structure is for advices; meandering is for holiday blog posts), to aviation. In the middle of the year, 414 people died in plane crashes within a week when a Malaysian Airlines and an Air Algerie aircraft crashed in Ukraine (killing 27 Australians) and Mali respectively. The former was shot down …
Continue reading “2014, not such a great year (beheadings, ebola, deforestation)”
It felt like it was surely the worst year ever for plane crashes. In fact, many more civilians used to die in aviation disasters each year for a long time, and the figures were even less dramatic when expressed as passenger deaths per million flights. 2014 was actually the year in which there were the …
Continue reading “2014: not such a great year (planes, boats, Sri Lanka)”
I have been saying for a while now that Schapelle Corby’s saga is a case study in the importance of choosing your legal team wisely. Moss v Eagleston [2014] NSWSC 6 provides further analysis of the performance of a lawyer selected by another of the players in the saga. That selection was a selection made by …
Paul Theroux is a travel writer I like. Good travellers who are good writers are a rare breed. I only know of one other instance (a childhood infatuation with Gerald Durrell aside): Eric Newby, author of A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush, and that precursor to so many lesser books, A Small Place in …
(Thanks to A. Davey for the image.) I’m off to Ethiopia on Friday. I have long wanted to go. I am hopelessly attracted to the exotic. I arrived in Timbuktoo on a small boat carrying cement up the Niger River and went off into the Sahara with an indigo-robed Tuareg and a camel, I rode …
I have previously expressed my disquiet about the Western Australian QC who told the Australian media that Schapelle Corby’s lawyers were trying to bribe the judges hearing her case. It seems the Bureau de Spanque de l’Australie de l’Ouest had in fact got right onto it, initiating an own motion investigation. The resultant prosecution has …
Continue reading “Another case about one of Schapelle Corby’s lawyers”
Update, 13 January 2010: See now British American Tobacco Australia Limited v Gordon (No 3) [2009] VSC 619. In Legal Practitioners Complaints Committee v Mark T QC [2009] WASAT 42, the Perth QC who announced to the Australian media that Schapelle Corby’s Balinese lawyers were trying to get money to bribe the judges sought to …
Continue reading “Professional confidentiality and the ‘iniquity exception’”
In Legal Practitioners Complaints Committee and MT QC [2009] WASAT 42, Judge Eckert’s 3 member tribunal considered the application of the rule in Jones v Dunkel to disciplinary prosecutions in tribunals (like VCAT) which are not bound by the rules of evidence. The practitioner sought to have inferences drawn against the prosecutor from the fact …
In Legal Practitioners Complaints Committee and MT QC [2009] WASAT 42, Judge Eckert’s 3 member tribunal considered the application to the Western Australian Legal Practice Act, 2003 of the laws relating to the power of state governments to make legislation regulating overseas conduct (i.e. ‘the law of extraterritoriality’). Her Honour is Deputy President of the …
Continue reading “State Acts’ power to regulate local lawyers’ overseas conduct”
Update, 8 May 2009: The Westralians have been listening to Justice of Appeal Nettle. Someone over there has thrown a 41 year old Margaret River solicitor into the slammer for almost 8, minimum of nearly 5. He stole almost $900,000 from an elderly man who lived alone on a farm. Original post: A solicitor was …
Continue reading “6 months jail for lawyer thief ‘remarkably merciful’”
Happy new year, readers. 2007 was a big one for me, and it seems that lots of interesting things happened. So I made a list. The Bar: My senior mentor, Peter Riordan SC, was elected Chairman of the Bar Council. Peter Hayes QC died, and the Ethics Committee took Peter Faris to task for commenting …
This blog is published with WordPress. While I was watching the waves in Bali, WordPress’s page view counter clicked over 50,000. You looked at this thing on average 225 times a day. If you want a blog of the same design calibre as this one, let me know, and I’ll put you onto a bloke …