I prepared an application to restrain a firm of solicitors from acting in a Corporations List matter in the Supreme Court recently, and so have been reading the latest cases about conflict injunctions. The very latest is TJ Board & Sons Pty Ltd v Castello [2008] VSC 91, where the plaintiff applied unsuccessfully to [...]

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America's Legal Profession Blog had posted yesterday on a conflicts case about what we in Australia would call "the getting to know you factors". The case was Hurley v Hurley, decided on 22 May 2007 by a 5 judge bench of the Maine Supreme Judicial Court. The background is that a lawyer may be [...]

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In my post "Judge uses big word", I commented on President Mason's use of "tergiversation". Now David Starkoff at Inchoate has noted another's analysis of the odds of each of the High Court judges other than Justice Kirby being responsible for the appearance of "epexegetical" (which seems to mean "explanatory in a way [...]

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Asia Pacific Telecommunications Ltd v Optus Networks Pty Ltd [2007] NSWSC 350 is a decision with wonderfully appalling facts. In the rush to agree consent orders before a directions hearing one morning, a megafirm sent a document to the other side which handed proof on a platter of a flagrant breach of a Chinese [...]

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Goubran shares my view that a solicitor can act for and against the one man at the same time. Just not in relation to the same thing. In fact, there is a degree of relation which makes it impermissible, and Goubran sets out the practically meaningless judicial utterances on the test for the requisite degree [...]

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On the relationship of the conduct rules to injunctions to restrain lawyers acting in the face of a conflict of duties, Goubran cites some useful authorities. I have always been astonished by what I thought was the Australian courts' universal and complete disregard in these kinds of applications to the professional conduct rules' conflicts provisions. [...]

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Finally, someone has gone a long way towards synthesising the law relating to injunctions to restrain lawyers from acting in the face of a conflict of duties. The Melbourne University Law Review article is "Conflicts of Duty: the Perennial Lawyers' Tale — A comparative Study of the Law in England and Australia", [2006] MULR 4. [...]

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Lawyers Weekly's 2 February 2007 edition reported the following comments from John Fast, Chief Legal Counsel of BHP-Billiton:
'“The area where I think the biggest difficulties arise is in … conflicts, and that is an area where increasingly firms that do not have a very clear conflicts of interest policy are at a disadvantage, and will [...]

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I have never understood what it is about Justice Brooking's extended obiter on the fiduciary duty of loyalty in Spincode  Pty Ltd v Look Software Pty Ltd (2001) 4 VR 501 which prompted such apoplexy. I would have thought that the second most obvious conflict of duties (after acting concurrently for two opposing parties) would [...]

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The Bar has produced a practice guide. It is a great achievement and stands as a beacon for the Law Institute's future efforts at promulgating knowledge of the practice rules. The Bar actually has something called the Professional Standards Education Committee. Written by Roisin Annesley, it was launched by Victoria Marles, the Legal Services Commissioner [...]

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