Justice Pagone's decision in Griffiths & Beerens Pty Ltd v Duggan [2008] VSC 230 came along just at the very moment I needed to find out the answer to a question I have always been unsure about. Say you have documents from one proceeding obtained from the other side on discovery. They are [...]

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Update, 7 July 2008: Watch the video of Tampoe slagging off his client here.
Original post: Lawyers and their regulators should care about the Corby case, because at the relevant time, a lot of people loved Schapelle and Schapelle does not now much like her lawyers. One of them has hit back, calling the Corbys [...]

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Schadenfreude being a German word, I suppose this must be an example of überschadenfreude. To watch this man digging his own grave made my guts clench up with distress. An advocate turns up more than an hour late to run a criminal trial in a Las Vegas court for a man facing a life sentence. [...]

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Justice Young, the editor of the Australian Law Journal, has gone public with his frustration at litigants constantly ringing his associate to dob in the other side for missing deadlines. Here's The Australian's article. He reiterates the unambiguity of the rule against unilateral communications. Generally, one never corresponds with a judge in relation [...]

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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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A delegate of John Britton, Queensland's Legal Services Commissioner, has declined to lay disciplinary charges against Dr Haneef's lawyer, Stephen Keim QC, despite finding a clear breach of a rule of professional conduct, and that — to my astonishment — Mr Keim gave his client's record of interview to The Australian without having sought Dr [...]

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Senior Member Howell's decision in Crawford v Kennedy [2008] VCAT 5 begins:
'Mr. Gilbert Crawford was a defendant in proceedings to be heard in the Magistrates’ Court on 29 March 2006. He was impressed by [the late] Mr. Peter [H] QC when he saw Mr. [H] on a television programme. Mr. Crawford went to [...]

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In a case in which a company is a party, the company gives an implied undertaking to the Court to use documents obtained through litigation compulsion — discovery, subpoena, call for production, etc. — only for the purposes of the proceeding, at least until they come into the public domain, for example by being adduced [...]

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A man hired a firm. Then he hired a new solicitor. He had not paid the fees of counsel retained by the first firm, for which the first firm was responsible for paying to the barrister. The first firm handed over its files to the new solicitor upon receiving an undertaking from [...]

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Update, 10 June 2008: The Bar's Ethics Committee dropped the investigation without giving reasons.
Update, 23 November: The press just can't seem to believe that anyone would be called Issac Brott, inevitably reverting to the more plausible Isaac Brott. And nor do they seem to be reading this blog. Here's The Australian again claiming the [...]

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