It’s standing room only at Court 7A in the NSW Supreme Court’s St James complex. Justice James Stevenson, until recently the head of NSW’s commercial list, is holding court in one of his last hearings before retirement. “Why would that take a day?” he asks a barrister seeking extra time for his client. “It might take half an hour.”
A small queue is forming in the hall, and a jam is developing in the doorway as lawyers fall over each other to bow on their way in and out of the courtroom. Down the corridor in Court 7D, Justice David Hammerschlag, “the Hammer”, is meting out similar treatment to a hapless advocate with defective pleadings. “This is no good. You’re not going to win [the dispute] with these … Someone’s going to have to do a proper job,” he says.
