Stephen Warne on professional negligence, regulation and discipline around the world

The Australian Professional Liability Blog random header image

Entries Tagged as 'Uncategorized'

‘Aggravated homosexuality’ to be punishable by death

February 26th, 2010 · No Comments

Here is a link to Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill, 2009. It is proposed that:

men who have sex with other men ’serially’ are to ’suffer death’;
it would be a crime to rent a house to a gay;
a woman who touches another woman with a view to seducing her will suffer life imprisonment; and
speech in favour of homosexuality [...]

[Read more →]

Tags: Uncategorized

Twenty-seven year old proceeding dismissed for want of prosecution

February 10th, 2010 · No Comments

Do things move slowly in Western Australia?  I wrote about an estate matter which went on and on and on here.  Now a twenty-seven year old proceeding, which came to have as one of its defendants a famous QC has been dismissed for want of prosecution and the decision confirmed on appeal: Smith v Bank [...]

[Read more →]

Tags: Uncategorized

Is there a principle of construction presuming simple interest in the absence of specification?

February 4th, 2010 · No Comments

Several times I have wondered, in my short career so far, whether a loan or other commercial agreement which provides for interest at a particular rate should be construed as providing for simple or compound interest.  My presumption has been that such a provision would be interpreted to provide for simple interest unless compound interest [...]

[Read more →]

Tags: Uncategorized

Richard Ackland’s 2009 wrap-up

December 15th, 2009 · No Comments

Richard Ackland has reminisced about the 2009 indicia of the law’s assiness, and it’s worth a read.  Rich pickings: the artist formerly known as Justice Einfeld, Carmen Randazzo QC2B?, Anal Sheik etc. etc. none of which have been covered on these pages.  It almost tempts me to reintroduce ‘200#; law and war’, last seen in [...]

[Read more →]

Tags: Uncategorized

Why Ethiopia?

September 20th, 2009 · No Comments

(Thanks to A. Davey for the image.) I’m off to Ethiopia on Friday.  I have long wanted to go.  I am hopelessly attracted to the exotic. I arrived in Timbuktoo on a small boat carrying cement up the Niger River and went off into the Sahara with an indigo-robed Tuareg and a camel, I rode [...]

[Read more →]

Tags: Uncategorized

Interrogatories

September 14th, 2009 · No Comments

Interrogatories are powerful.  They are also out of fashion, partly because no party interrogated ever answers them properly, occasioning a post-discovery hiatus when a trial might otherwise be set down.  In the Supreme Court, you get 42 days to answer. Then compelling proper answers takes weeks more, and suddenly a great deal of time has [...]

[Read more →]

Tags: Uncategorized

Useful stuff from Dr Manhattan

July 26th, 2009 · No Comments

Melbourne lawyer Dr Manhattan writes Quis Quistodiet Ipsos Custodes.  The Doctor has been generating useful stuff recently.  See ‘English Reports Available Online‘, which tells you how to find the English Reports up until 1873 online, ‘New Evidence Text Released‘, which has links to numerous resources on the uniform evidence legislation set to become law in [...]

[Read more →]

Tags: Uncategorized

Legal Aid’s refusal to accept late application for panel quashed

July 23rd, 2009 · No Comments

Victoria Legal Aid has a panel of solicitors to whom it refers indictable criminal matters.  A firm of solicitors had been on it for a while, then missed a deadline for applications for renewal. VLA had emailed the firm’s general email address, and the inexperienced receptionist (or former receptionist, for all I know…) had neglected [...]

[Read more →]

Tags: Uncategorized

Inferences from non-response to assertions in correspondence received by you

July 12th, 2009 · No Comments

I have never before seen written down any law which explains what use may be made of the fact that you sent a letter to someone containing allegations which are not denied by a letter in response.  It is quite common to see lawyers’ letters which say ‘We note for the record that we do [...]

[Read more →]

Tags: Uncategorized

Construction of the arbitration clause

June 15th, 2009 · No Comments

The relatively new Supreme Court judge Justice Davies has provided a useful overview on the law in Victoria on the construction of arbitration clauses in 1144 Nepean Highway Pty Ltd v Leigh Mardon Australasia Pty Ltd [2009] VSC 226.  Her Honour found the clause meant what it said, and stayed the proceeding which had been [...]

[Read more →]

Tags: Uncategorized