The technical defence is for me a beautiful fascination. A self-confessed “fact Nazi” and chronology enthusiast, I would nevertheless prefer not to have to charge clients for the kind of obsessive mastery of facts in complicated and long-running failed litigation which is the subject of a professional negligence suit unless absolutely necessary. Summary disposition holds [...]

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The approach of VCAT’s Legal Practice List to a nice limitations point is illustrated by Wells’s Case, [2006] VCAT 2370 (Senior Member Howell, 16 November 2006), also the subject of this post. What must have been a professional negligence action was commenced just 4 days before the 6th anniversary of the Legal Practitioner ceasing [...]

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Winnote Pty Ltd v Page [2006] NSWCA 287 is not only a case about digging up peat for profit but a learned essay on the application of that simple little rule that you can’t sue your lawyer more than 6 years after your cause of action against him accrued. Victorian soils yield difficult legal questions: [...]

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Regent Leisuretime Limited v Skerrett [2006] EWCA 1184 is a lovely reliance on counsel case. You can read a precis here.

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Wells’s Case [2006] VCAT 2370 (Senior Member Howell, 16 November 2006)
Mrs Wells’s case, also the subject of the previous post, was struck out under s. 75 of the VCAT Act, 1998 for having been brought out of time. Mr Howell found that the case was “lacking in substance” because it was statute barred and ordered [...]

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Wells’s Case [2006] VCAT 2370 (Senior Member Howell, 16 November 2006)
I have always thought I was the only person in the world who held the view that an unsuccessful claimant in the Legal Profession Tribunal was not allowed, despite s. 133(2) of the Legal Practice Act, 1996 to have a second go in the courts, [...]

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It took New Zealand’s new ultimate appellate court a long time to hear Chamberlains v Lai [2006] NZSC 70 and make a decision, but after a long think, its judges have decided to give advocates’ immunity the boot. Advocates’ immunity, otherwise sometimes known as “barristers’ immunity” or “forensic immunity”, applies equally to solicitors involved in [...]

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Kabourakis v Medical Practitioners Board of Victoria [2005] VSC 493 (Gillard J)

Justice Gillard said doctors get no res judicata and allowed the doctors’ regulator to fix a bungled prosecution following a complaint by deciding to investigate the matter already decided under its power to investigate of its own volition.

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Zunica’s Case [2006] VCAT 110
A barrister succeeded on an immunity defence and sought costs upon receiving the reasons. The applicant sought recognition of the fact that a costs dispute survived the immunity decision. Mr Butcher said [7]:
“The jurisdiction of the Tribunal to hear and determine a dispute is based upon the dispute as [...]

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Mathiasz’s Case [2006] VCAT 416
Mr Howell said a solicitor might be immune in respect of pre-proceedings conduct, but not in this case, the facts of which did not satisfy the intimately connected test.

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