In this post, I just reproduce what Deputy President Dwyer said recently about the burden of proof, right to silence, and inferences which may be drawn from the fact of the exercise by a solicitor of the right to silence. He said it in the context of a hard-fought hearing into the conduct of Kylie's [...]

[Read more →]

On 13 August 2008, Deputy President O'Dwyer found charges of misconduct at common law made out against Kylie Minogue's one-time solicitor, the man towards the centre of the government's Operation Wickenby investigation, Michael Brereton. See Legal Services Commissioner v Brereton [2008] VCAT 1723. Mr O'Dwyer found he had transferred more than $2.3 million of [...]

[Read more →]

In Law Institute of Victoria v DSS [2008] VCAT 1179, the Institute sought in a misconduct prosecution an order that the solicitor not be allowed to handle trust monies for 50 years. Vice President Judge Ross described the submission as 'somewhat excessive'.
The solicitor had stolen $75,000 from his clients and out of his trust [...]

[Read more →]

The Crown entered a nolle prosequi on Tuesday on the charges of giving false evidence against Melbourne's best known female criminal lawyer, Z G-W. In other words, they dropped the charges before trial for want of a reasonable prospect of conviction. The key witness was unable to remember crucial evidence which the Crown [...]

[Read more →]

I only just caught up with the fact that the Court of Appeal has overturned Justice Gillard's decision in Kabourakis v Medical Board of Victoria [2005] VSC 493, the subject of an earlier post. See [2006] VSC 301.
VCAT's Vice President Harbison, sitting in the Legal Practice List for the first time I am aware [...]

[Read more →]

Legal Services Commissioner v BH [2008] VCAT 687 is a case with terrible facts. A man died as a result of a crime. The family hired the respondent solicitor to act for them in crimes compensation applications. He lost the file some time into the second year of the retainer, but did [...]

[Read more →]

In The Law Society of New South Wales v Spring [2007] NSWSC 1273, the Supreme Court of NSW referred to one of the defendants as 'Lolly Pops'.  Its principal was another defendant, Mr Spring.  He was a retail leases specialist and helped people with retail lease problems, and represented them in statutory tribunals where [...]

[Read more →]

Update, 13 November: Clayton Utz's take on the case here.
Here's a long Sydney Morning Herald article about the latest big Chinese wall case, this time not in the context of a law firm, but of Citigroup, an investment bank. Here's The Age's shorter version. The case is ASIC v Citigroup Global Markets Australia [...]

[Read more →]

As reported in today's Australian Financial Review, the NSW Court of Appeal has told the Administrative Decisions Tribunal's Legal Services Division that it got it wrong when it found a Sydney solicitor guilty of gross overcharging. The case is  LN v Legal Services Commissioner  [2007] NSWCA 130  Though the solicitor signed the bill, he did [...]

[Read more →]

The last post referred to part 1 of the last chapter of an intriguing saga. The second and final part of that chapter is the decision on costs: PJQ v Law Institute of Victoria (No. 2) [2007] VSCA 132. The President of the Court of Appeal rejected the following submissions by the Institute:

that the Institute [...]

[Read more →]