Two men litigated a case over $10,000 in VCAT’s Civil List before a sessional member. As per the norm in that list, they were unrepresented. That Civil List is a place a world away from the proceedings you read about in the law reports.  I must say I like the idea of an accessible tribunal [...]

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In recent times, I have not found legal regulators forthcoming in advising in advance the evidence to be tendered against a practitioner, and have generally sought directions for disclosure where it could not be sorted out between the parties’ representatives, sometimes attracting ire in the process.  I have had disagreements, too, about who should go [...]

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Update, 24 February 2010: An appeal failed: [2010] VSCA 17.
Original post: Rule 1.17(1) of the Supreme Court Rules (the County Court’s and Magistrates’ Court’s rules are to similar effect) reads as follows:
“Except where otherwise provided by or under any Act or these Rules, a corporation, whether or not a party, shall not take any step [...]

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Qantas Airways Limited v Gama [2008] FCAFC 69 discusses the interrelationship of the uniform evidence legislation and the High Court’s decision in Briginshaw v Briginshaw (1938) 60 CLR 336.  The relevant bit is in the separate decision of Justice Branson, with whom Justices French (now of the High Court) and Jacobsen agreed at [110].  Briginshaw [...]

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A Queensland District Court judgment (Saunders v Paragon Property Investments Pty Ltd [2009] QDC 19) about the costs provision in a Queensland consumer tribunal has alerted me to a passage from a decision of the Queensland Court of Appeal (Tamawood Limited v Paans [2005] 2 Qd R 101) which might be useful in arguing for [...]

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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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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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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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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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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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