News: French CJ gives Harold Ford Memorial Lecture on Trusts and Statute

Melbourne Law School was honoured to hear French CJ give the 2015 Harold Ford Memorial Lecture. This year’s topic was “Trusts and Statute”, a fitting nod to the late Professor Ford and his expertise in both trusts law and corporate law. Chief Justice French discussed the history of trusts and the way in which statute intertwined with trust law from a very early stage. He also discussed the impact of legislation on trust law in various different areas, including charities law, tax law and corporate law. His comments on the need for coherence, and on the difficulties and advantages of statutory intervention were of particular interest.

His Honour’s presentation was videoed and is available for viewing here.

News: New ICAC challenge goes directly to the High Court

At a hearing on Monday, Gageler J ordered the ‘removal’ to the High Court of a NSW matter challenging the constitutionality of recently enacted NSW legislation retrospectively validating some past actions by that state’s Independent Commission Against Corruption. The Judiciary Act permits the High Court to move any current constitutional or federal dispute in any Australian court directly to the High Court if one or more parties (or an Attorney-General) applies. Last Tuesday, Gageler J agreed to expedite the request to move the application and ordered the parties to provide written submissions. According to Monday’s reasons, those submissions (which are not publicly available) were persuasive:

I am persuaded to take this course having regard, in particular, to the potential for an early resolution of the constitutional issue by this Court to result in a significant saving of time in the hearing and disposition of the proceeding between the present parties that is now pending in the Court of Appeal, as well as to the resolution or substantial resolution of a number of other proceedings now pending in the Supreme Court of New South Wales in which the same issue arises, or is likely to arise.

Indeed, the removal was supported by the party challenging the legislation and was not opposed by ICAC. (By contrast, see here on unsuccessful applications for removal.)

The current ICAC matter has close ties to two separate High Court judgments that were brought down on April 15 this year. Continue reading

News: The High Court splits evenly again

Today, the High Court issued its judgment in the last of three six-judge decisions heard in the months before Crennan J’s retirement. As I discussed in this piece in The ConversatIon last December, even-numbered benches are a sporadic, but persistent, by-product of the Court’s composition:

This same problem arises each and every time a High Court judge approaches retirement. Indeed, it’s happening right now. The Court is scheduled to hear six judge cases in important matters through to June next year because two High Court judges are retiring in succession. Any one of them could be another tie. Cases already at risk of being resolved, perhaps irreversibly, by a tie breaker include regulatory action over Sydney’s radio hoax tragedy, a native title claim over a World War Two training ground, and the aftermath of the collapsed tourism, property and finance group, Octaviar bankruptcy.

The radio hoax and bankruptcy cases were resolved unanimously. However, as I feared last year, today’s native title decision was a tie, Continue reading

Queensland v Congoo

Jeremy Gans, ‘News: The High Court Splits Evenly Again’ (13 May 2015).

The High Court has dismissed an appeal from the decision of the Full Federal Court, in which the FCAFC held that military orders made during the Second World War did not extinguish native title rights.The Court split 3:3, which, due to s 23 of the Judiciary Act 1903 (Cth), means the FCAFC’s decision dismissing Queensland’s appeal stands. Continue reading

News: Over a dozen High Court holdings abolished in Victoria

Yesterday, Victoria’s Parliament passed a law that overturns over a significant number of High Court holdings on the law governing criminal trials. The notes to the Jury Directions Bill 2015 state that it ‘abolishes’ (or confirms the prior abolition of) rules stated by the High Court in the following cases:

  • Pemble v R [1971] HCA 20,  Gilbert v R [2000] HCA 15 and R v Nguyen [2010] HCA 38, on jury directions on defences, offences and bases for complicity that were not argued by the prosecution or defence.
  • Edwards v R [1993] HCA 63 and Zoneff v R [2000] HCA 28, on jury directions on so-called ‘consciousness of guilt’ evidence.
  • Longman v R [1989] HCA 60Crampton v R [2000] HCA 60 and Doggett v R [2001] HCA 46, on jury directions on how the defence may have been disadvantaged due to the time elapsed between an alleged offence and the trial
  • Weissensteiner v R [1993] HCA 65Azzopardi v R [2001] HCA 25 and Dyers v R [2002] HCA 45, on jury directions on the defendant’s failure to explain evidence or to call particular witnesses at the trial
  • Kilby v R [1973] HCA 30 and Crofts v R [1996] HCA 22, on jury directions on the credibility of rape complaint evidence
  • Shepherd v R [1990] HCA 56, on the proof of facts that are indispensable to the prosecution case.

The BIll also refines other aspects of the law on jury directions that have repeatedly been addressed in the High Court, including directions on so-called ‘similar fact’ evidence, identification evidence and the meaning of ‘proof beyond reasonable doubt’.

The sheer number of cases addressed by the BIll is only part of the story. Continue reading

Lindsay v The Queen

The High Court has allowed an appeal from a decision of the South Australian Supreme Court relating to the provocation defence. The appellant was convicted of murdering Mr Negre who had made homosexual advances towards him, and was sentenced to life imprisonment. Lindsay’s primary line of defence was that it had not been proved beyond reasonable doubt that Continue reading

A Statutory Exception to Immediate Indefeasibility Explained: Cassegrain v Gerard Cassegrain & Co Pty Ltd

Cassegrain case page

Tolstoy famously starts Anna Karenina with the line: “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” There is nothing quite so unhappy as a dispute between family members which ends up in court. In Cassegrain v Gerard Cassegrain & Co Pty Ltd, the dispute was between siblings who all had interests in the family company, Gerard Cassegrain & Co. The dispute before the High Court was the latest in a long line which began when the family patriarch, Gerard Cassegrain, died in 1993. Gerard and his wife had six children. Gerard’s second child, Claude, was the appellant in this case. The dispute involved certain land which Claude had registered in his and his wife’s name, and then solely in his wife’s name.

In Australia, we have Torrens title. Torrens title is often said to have the benefit of indefeasibility, which means that when a person becomes the registered proprietor of land, that title is not subject to any unregistered interests which may have existed before registration. This means that a person who becomes the registered proprietor of a Torrens interest can be secure about their transaction; they will not be subject to any unknown pre-existing interests. However, it may operate unfairly to those who have pre-existing interests in the land. Consequently, there are a number of limited exceptions to indefeasibility, including the fraud exception. This was the exception which was considered in Cassegrain. Continue reading