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

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Entries Tagged as 'procedure'

The rule against duplicity in disciplinary charges

March 1st, 2010 · 1 Comment

‘Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?’, a Melbourne lawyer’s criminal law blog,  explained the criminal law rule against duplicity here.  I am not much interested in it from a professional discipline point of view, and it seems the courts tend not to get over-excited about it either (though the lawyer made some progress with it in Law [...]

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Tags: Discipline · natural justice · procedure · prosecutors' duties

Supreme Courts’ inherent jurisdiction to discipline lawyers to be invoked sparingly

February 1st, 2010 · No Comments

In AM v Legal Practitioners Disciplinary Tribunal [2010] NTSC 02, a Full Court of the Supreme Court of the Northern Territory heard an appeal by way of rehearing into a decision of the Disciplinary Tribunal (see my earlier post on the case).  One of the grounds of appeal was that the Tribunal had not had [...]

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Tags: Discipline · appeals · jurisdiction · procedure

Privy Council on privilege as an answer to legal regulators’ powers of compulsion

December 23rd, 2009 · No Comments

Rosemary Pattenden’s The Law of Professional-Client Confidentiality is one of those books which, until now, I would like to have but could not bring myself to shell out for.  Just now, I spent $134 on a second-hand copy, and here’s why. In a web-based update for the book is a reference to B v [...]

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Tags: Discipline · procedure · regulators' duties

Commissioner’s obligation to charge dishonesty if he intends to allege it

December 4th, 2009 · No Comments

Relatively recently, I posted on the question of whether a Bureau de Spank desiring to rely on a practitioner’s dishonesty or other form of conscious wrongdoing must expressly allege it in the charge, and discussed Walter v Council of Queensland Law Society Incorporated (1988) 77 ALR 228 at 234; [1988] HCA 8.  Now, in Legal [...]

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Tags: Discipline · Ethics · Legal Profession Act · Legal Services Commissioner · Misconduct · Practising certificates · Professional regulation · Striking off · Trust money · amendment · appeals · concurrent duties · conflicts · current client and past client · duty and duty · jurisdiction · natural justice · procedure · trust monies · wilful disregard for rules

Disciplinary charges and intentional wrongdoing

October 29th, 2009 · No Comments

Update, 4 December 2009: see now Legal Services Commissioner v Madden (No 2) [2008] QCA 301.  What the Queensland Court of Appeal said there about Walter’s Case, the subject of this post, is reproduced at the end of the post.
Original post: Does a lawyer’s Bureau de Spank have to say in a charge in a [...]

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Tags: Discipline · Misconduct · Unsatisfactory conduct · natural justice · procedure · prosecutorial failures · prosecutors' duties · reckless disregard for rules · trust monies · wilful disregard for rules

Doctors, psychologists, sex and former patients

September 7th, 2009 · No Comments

In Re a Psychologist [2009] TASSC 70, the Supreme Court of Tasmania quashed a decision of the Psychologists Registration Board of Tasmania to suspend a psychologist for 6 months for entering into a sexual relationship with a former patient fewer than 2 years after the end of the therapeutic relationship.  In fact he married her. [...]

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Tags: "disgraceful and dishonourable" · Discipline · Misconduct · amendment · doctors · natural justice · procedure · prosecutorial failures · prosecutors' duties

Double jeopardy and disciplinary proceedings

August 12th, 2009 · No Comments

Coke-Wallis v Institute of Chartered Accountants In England and Wales [2009] EWCA Civ 730 considered the application of principles of res judicata and autrefois acquit (the criminal version of the same principle, an aspect of double jeopardy) to disciplinary ‘prosecutions’.  It did so in the context of the disciplining of accountants.  The relevant scheme made [...]

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Tags: Abuse of process · Discipline · Misconduct · autrefois acquit · procedure

Commissioner’s unexplained delay reduces penalty for serious misconduct

August 6th, 2009 · No Comments

Speaking of the need for speed as Justice Heydon and I were on this blog yesterday, there are two other instances worthy of reporting.
First, the High Court has recently considered the need for speed in criminal proceedings, and were not nearly as excited about it as in commercial litigation. This time, they rolled the court [...]

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Tags: Discipline · Legal Services Commissioner · Misconduct · costs · mental illness · procedure · prosecutors' duties · regulators' duties · trust monies

Briginshaw and the uniform evidence law

May 4th, 2009 · No Comments

Qantas Airways Limited v Gama [2008] FCAFC 69 discusses the interrelationship of the uniform evidence legislation and the High Court’s decision in Briginshaw v Briginshaw (1938) 60 CLR 336.  The relevant bit is in the separate decision of Justice Branson, with whom Justices French (now of the High Court) and Jacobsen agreed at [110].  Briginshaw [...]

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Tags: Discipline · VCAT · VCAT Act · procedure

A new text on professional discipline

April 29th, 2009 · No Comments

Lovegrove & Lord’s Kim Lovegrove and barrister Sav Korica have just published a little book called Disciplinary Hearings and Advocacy (Hybrid, 2009). It sells for $39.95. Lovegrove is the Chairman of the Building Practitioners Board, and presides over disciplinary hearings. I suspect that frustration with other decision makers’ decision making (‘there may exist some, particularly [...]

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Tags: Discipline · Professional regulation · doctors · procedure · prosecutors' duties