Tweet It may be professional misconduct for a party’s lawyer to communicate with the judge’s associate (or, of course, the judge) without her opponent’s consent if the purpose of the communication is to influence the conduct or outcome of the case: Legal Profession Complaints Committee v NKC [2012] WASAT 77 at [147] et seq.  In [...]

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Tweet Unilateral communication with a judge’s associate is a dangerous practice.  Unless it relates purely to procedural matters (and who knows exactly what the limits of that are), any communication with the Court, especially with a judge’s associate should be copied to the other side, or the other side should immediately be informed of it.  [...]

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Tweet The rather beautiful English blogger, Afua Hirsch, at once a barrister and a Guardian correspondent, has posted a beautifully written obituary to Lord Bingham, pictured.  It is definitely a blog post, rather than something more formal belonging to the print version of a newspaper, and it is a fine example of its form, like [...]

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Tweet Herewith an extract from von Reisner v Commonwealth of Australia (No 2) [2009] FCAFC 172: ’1 Ms von Reisner was successful before us in an appeal against an order made on 31 March 2009 that she not be able to commence any proceedings in this Court without prior leave of the Court: see (2009) 177 FCR [...]

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Tweet Judge Iain Ross, who was the head honcho of VCAT’s Legal Practice List, and the Tribunal’s Vice-President, has been appointed to the Supreme Court, presumably taking up the spot left behind by a good and honourable man and quiet champion of human rights, Justice David Harper, who has been appointed to the Court of [...]

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Tweet A former client of mine, dissatisfied with the adverse outcome in a complaint he lodged making serious allegations against a senior member of the profession has tipped me off to an own motion investigation conducted into the Bureau de Spank by the Victorian Ombudsman.  The results, reproduced below, will not assist morale at the [...]

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Tweet This is a note about a decision by a judge who is only a year older than me, Justice Nye Perram, a novel and somewhat unsettling circumstance: Collard v Australian Securities & Investments Commission (No. 3) [2008] FCA 1681. I looked him up because the judgment is so beautifully written, and found a welcome [...]

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Tweet Calderbank offers — those marked ‘without prejudice except as to costs’ — are one of those subjects which recur so often that single judge decisions are constantly coming out, but one never knows exactly which ones to read. They all say much the same thing, with an equal degree of fuziness, and the illusion [...]

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Tweet Stephen Witham (pictured) moved into Michael Flaherty’s flat. The relationship quickly soured when Witham assaulted Flaherty’s girlfriend, and stood over people for drugs and money. So Flaherty got some mates together, hit Witham about with baseball bats, hogtied him with ropes and cable ties, wrapped him in a doona, popped him in the boot, [...]

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Tweet Update, 2 June 2008: When I was writing the original post, I badly wanted to link to this classic motion to dismiss a criminal charge against a kid who called his principal ‘a fucker, a fag, and a fucking fag’, but it seems it was one thing I did not take with me when [...]

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