Stephen Warne on professional negligence, regulation and discipline around the world

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Entries Tagged as 'Abuse of process'

Vexation

October 5th, 2008 · 1 Comment

An article by Peter Munro in The Age provides a surprisingly sophisticated analysis of the 'problem' of vexatious litigants. The unrepresented obsessed do pose problems for the administration of justice. Consider the web of litigation sketched out in Mentyn v Law Society of Tasmania [2004] TASSC 24.

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Tags: Abuse of process · litigation ethics

VCAT runs out of patience with serial adjourner

March 17th, 2008 · No Comments

I was drinking beer at The Peacock the other afternoon, and a VCAT member was muttering about the Supreme Court overturning VCAT decisions on the basis that applications for adjournment were not granted when they could have been cured by an order for costs. The suggestion was that the Court may have overlooked the [...]

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Tags: Abuse of process · Professional fees and disbursements · Solicitor client bills of costs · VCAT · VCAT Act · costs disclosure defaults · costs disputes

Application by appellant to remove respondent's trial counsel from appeal dismissed

February 5th, 2008 · No Comments

In Chen v Chan [2008] VSCA 2, President Maxwell and Justice of Appeal Redlich dismissed an application by the appellant for an order enjoining the respondent's solicitor and counsel from acting in the appeal. The applicant alleged that there had been wrongdoing by the respondent's lawyers at the trial. In fact that was [...]

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Tags: Abuse of process · Ethics · Professional regulation · concurrent duties · conflicts · duty and interest · duty to court · litigation ethics

Private prosecution of PM for treason leads to vexatious litigant status

October 18th, 2007 · No Comments

It took an awfully long time — almost 15,000 words — for Justice Hansen to state the bleeding obvious in Attorney-General for the State of Victoria v Shaw [2007] VSC 1148, but in the circumstances, I well understand why his Honour desired to appeal-proof his judgment. Mr Shaw, who as a newly annointed vexatious litigant, [...]

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Tags: Abuse of process · Judges

Summary dismissal in a solicitors' negligence claim at VCAT

May 28th, 2007 · 3 Comments

Skinner's Case [2007] VCAT 917, a claim against a leading labour law firm, was for some reason heard in VCAT's Civil List. A more likely list would have been the Legal Practice List, given that it was a professional negligence claim, albeit one pleaded under the Fair Trading Act, 1999 and the Trade Practices Act, [...]

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Tags: Abuse of process · Fair Trading Act · Negligence · VCAT · VCAT Act · defences

Misconduct charge no. 21 against Victorian silk stayed as abuse of process

April 16th, 2007 · No Comments

The latest and possibly last chapter in the tribulations of Victoria's most senior female silk is to be found in M v VCAT [2007] VSC 89, a decision of Justice Mandie. The barrister was charged on 4 July 2005 with 24 charges of misconduct, and ended up after a hearing of the first [...]

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Tags: Abuse of process · Discipline · Ethics · Legal Practice Act · Misconduct · amendment · duty to court · judicial review · litigation ethics · procedure · prosecutorial failures · prosecutors' duties · reckless disregard for rules

Abuse of process and disciplinary tribunals

April 16th, 2007 · No Comments

In M v VCAT [2007] VSC 89, discussed in the next post, the Supreme Court of Victoria's Justice Mandie provided a useful treatment of the law relating to abuse of process as applied to disciplinary tribunals. It is set out below in full.

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Tags: Abuse of process · Discipline · Legal Practice Act · amendment · procedure

A good summation of Microsoft Word metadata issues for lawyers

March 17th, 2007 · 1 Comment

I have been involved in teams of litigators on the biggest cases around with dedicated IT people fixing everything IT related, and consider myself to be relatively well aware of the perils of electronic documents. But some metadata slipped out with a document not so long ago, a comment which I could not see in [...]

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Tags: Abuse of process · Uncategorized

Staying disciplinary proceedings as abuses of process

January 17th, 2007 · No Comments

The following passage from the NSW Court of Appeal's decision in Lindsay v Health Care Complaints Commission [2005] NSWCA 356 (Hunt AJA, others agreeing) casts some doubt on whether a medical disciplinary tribunal presided over by a judge had power to stay a disciplinary proceeding as an abuse of process. The issue arose in the [...]

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Tags: Abuse of process · Uncategorized · autrefois acquit · jurisdiction · procedure

More on absolute privilege and lawyers and clients: Hercules v Phease

January 14th, 2007 · No Comments

In "Whistleblowers and the Law of Defamation: Time for Statutory Privilege?" [2005] 3 Web JCLI, David Lewis cites More v Weaver [1928] 2KB 520 as authority for the general proposition that lawyer-client communications are absolutely privileged, that is, that they may not be sued upon in defamation. I have not read the case to check [...]

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Tags: Abuse of process