The Snitch: Good Samaritan barrister fights fine for saving woman
Copping a parking ticket when you’ve stopped to help a woman having a medical episode is poor form, but when the Sydney City Council refused to waive the penalty barrister Ertunc Ozen QC decided that wasn’t good enough.
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It’s basic human decency that if a person is having a medical episode you should stop your car and help them, right?
We now know that Sydney City Council says no.
Just ask one of the state’s most respected barristers, Ertunc Ozen SC. He had to go to court to clear his name after he stopped his car to help a woman in urgent need of medical help, only to have a council parking inspector ping him with a $263 fine for parking in a bus stop.
Call it a hunch, but we reckon that a Sydney silk wouldn’t be bothered much if they lost $263.
But Mr Ozen fought the fine on principle and it was overturned in the Downing Centre Local Court on Monday.
Mr Ozen’s lawyer Benjamin Goh said: “My client should have been congratulated, not prosecuted.”
A glance at the facts of the matter shows he’s not wrong.
Mr Ozen was driving past the corner of George St and Bathurst St in the Sydney CBD at 3.52pm on February 28 when he saw a sandal fly over the road.
He looked and saw a woman suffering a medical episode who was taking her clothes off and throwing them at people.
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People were also beginning to surround the woman with some filming her on their mobile phones.
Mr Ozen stopped his car in a bus stop before running to the woman and covering her with his jacket before the police and ambulance arrived about 20 minutes later.
The barrister arrived back at his car to find the fine. He called the council about 30 minutes later and was told he would have to produce the medical records of the woman, whose identity was still a mystery to him.
Good on him for stopping in the first place and good on him for challenging the fine we say.
EXCUSE MY RECUSE
Judges are a funny bunch. There are times where the minutiae of life really annoys them.
And don’t they go on about it.
That said, it turns out that District Court Judge Garry Neilson absolutely hates the word “recuse” in certain circumstances.
We know this because Judge Neilson gave us a 467-word rundown of his thoughts on the word in a recent court case. This was before he turned his mind to a lawyer’s application that was before him: that he recuse himself from acting in the case.
Our understanding was that it meant the lawyers on the case were applying to replace him with another judge.
It was.
But first Judge Neilson wanted to make a few comments about that word — “recuse”.
“This is an application that I “recuse” myself,” he told the court.
“The use of such terminology is deplorable.”
He then gave a full rundown of the Latin roots of the word and how it was a “technical term in Roman law”.
Then there was the fact that “the primary meaning assigned to one form of the word was that of being a “recusant” and the “associated status of recusancy”.
It was all very confusing for The Snitch.
But then. Finally. There was light at the end of the tunnel. A conclusion was reached.
“However, the verb, recuse, in English has the same meanings as it does in Latin, to refuse a thing offered, to reject or renounce a person or his authority or to object or to refuse to do something,” Judge Neilson mused.
“The use of the word ‘recuse’ being a request of a judge to disqualify himself from the hearing of a case is not consistent with its Latin etymology, is inconsistent with English usage and, although it may be used in the United States of America, it is not part of the Queen‘s English and its use is to be eschewed.”
So how did it end?
He disqualified himself from the case.
Here ends today’s lesson.
GOT A SNITCH? Contact ava.benny-morrison@news.com.au or brenden.hills@news.com.au