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

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Entries Tagged as 'VCAT Act'

The practising certificate suspension challenge that went wrong

October 21st, 2008 · No Comments

Update, 8 November 2008: When I wrote this post, the Court of Appeal had authoritatively answered another of the questions posed below, about the penalty privileges, but I had not yet read the case, CT v Medical Practitioners Board [2008] VSCA 157.  Now I have, and I have posted here about it.
Original post: WPE v [...]

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Tags: Discipline · Misconduct · Practising certificates · Professional regulation · VCAT Act · civil-disciplinary interplay · costs · procedure · prosecutors' duties · regulators' duties

Latest word on burden of proof in professional discipline 'prosecutions'

August 30th, 2008 · No Comments

In this post, I just reproduce what Deputy President Dwyer said recently about the burden of proof, right to silence, and inferences which may be drawn from the fact of the exercise by a solicitor of the right to silence. He said it in the context of a hard-fought hearing into the conduct of Kylie's [...]

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Tags: "disgraceful and dishonourable" · Discipline · Legal Practice Act · Legal Services Commissioner · Misconduct · Unsatisfactory conduct · VCAT Act · common law · procedure · prosecutorial failures · reckless disregard for rules · trust monies · wilful disregard for rules

Is interest a form of relief VCAT can grant?

August 14th, 2008 · No Comments

In a long-wnded way, I tentatively suggest that, so long as the applicant has the sense to invoke s. 108 of the Fair Trading Act, 1999, then penalty interest is available under the Supreme Court Act, 1986, just like in the Supreme Court, so long as the dispute is a consumer-trader dispute. That is, a [...]

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Tags: Fair Trading Act · Legal Profession Act · Professional fees and disbursements · Solicitor client bills of costs · VCAT · VCAT Act · costs disputes

VCAT runs out of patience with serial adjourner

March 17th, 2008 · No Comments

I was drinking beer at The Peacock the other afternoon, and a VCAT member was muttering about the Supreme Court overturning VCAT decisions on the basis that applications for adjournment were not granted when they could have been cured by an order for costs. The suggestion was that the Court may have overlooked the [...]

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Tags: Abuse of process · Professional fees and disbursements · Solicitor client bills of costs · VCAT · VCAT Act · costs disclosure defaults · costs disputes

Legal Practice List guru to give VCAT seminar

November 6th, 2007 · No Comments

There's a seminar coming up in exactly a week's time at the Law Institute at which Alan Hebb is going to speak on disputes in VCAT's Legal Practice List. He's a good bloke and has more experience there than anyone else. He was very often briefed as Counsel Assisting the Tribunal, both at [...]

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Tags: Fair Trading Act · Legal Profession Act · Negligence · VCAT · VCAT Act

VCAT does not invoke Fair Trading Act to cure want of Legal Profession Act jurisdiction

October 13th, 2007 · No Comments

In Huang's Case [2007] VCAT 1692, Senior Member Howell was presented with a case brought by a man who had initiated the Legal Profession Act, 2004's lawyer-client costs dispute process by lodging a civil complaint with the Legal Services Commissioner. The scheme of the Act is that the Commissioner tries to settle the dispute, and [...]

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Tags: Legal Profession Act · Professional fees and disbursements · VCAT Act

Home Office v Harman: some law about its application to VCAT

August 11th, 2007 · No Comments

This is a workmanlike little post, designed simply to trap into the world of this blog for when I need them next in court the legal principles discussed in Acting President Bowman's decision in ZGW v Legal Services Board [2007] VCAT 1406, casenoted in the previous post. The parties' arguments are also reproduced below [...]

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Tags: Professional regulation · VCAT Act · duties of confidentiality

The obligation not to use documents obtained under compulsion except for the purpose compelled

August 11th, 2007 · No Comments

Update, 21 August 2007: Latest case on the implied undertaking:  Street v Hearne [2007] NSWCA 113.
When a person comes into possession of documents through legal compulsion, they are under an implied obligation not to use them for any purpose but the purpose for which the compulsion operates. Most lawyers know the rule insofar as [...]

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Tags: Professional regulation · VCAT Act · duties of confidentiality

The 60 day time limit for instituting VCAT proceedings under the Legal Profession Act

August 3rd, 2007 · No Comments

In Ralph Cosentino v MY [2007] VCAT 1319, Member Butcher continued a tradition of statutory interpretation of a little technical provision about when service of statutory notices is effective. That tradition, of the Legal Profession Tribunal and its predecessors, has always troubled me. Though it does not seem to have been cited by counsel,  a [...]

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Tags: Legal Practice Act · Legal Profession Act · Limitations of actions · VCAT Act

Pizer's Annotated VCAT Act comes into third edition

July 27th, 2007 · No Comments

        
My friend Jason Pizer had the launch of the third edition of his book this week, and I went along and enjoyed the company of VCAT's Acting President John Bowman, Deputy President Marilyn Harbison, and Justice Chris Maxwell, President of the Court of Appeal.  It's the VCAT equivalent of Williams, the looseleaf 'Bible' of [...]

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Tags: Book reviews · Discipline · Legal writing · Professional regulation · VCAT · VCAT Act · doctors · procedure