Ipso Facto: The private grumblings of judges and prosecutors

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A NSW District Court judge this week threw a burning missile into the middle of a lengthy stand-off between the state’s judiciary and its chief prosecutor.

Judge Penelope Wass took the extraordinary step of filing a formal complaint against Sally Dowling SC after Ms Dowling raised secret grievances about her with chief judge Sarah Huggett in the middle of a sexual assault prosecution.

Wass disclosed the complaint in the Taree District Court on Tuesday morning, and said Dowling’s report to Huggett - which concerned Wass compelling witnesses to hand up their phones as evidence - was “inappropriate and irrelevant”.

NSW DPP Sally Dowling SC.

I spent most of Tuesday trying to find out if a sitting judge has ever made a complaint against the Director of Public Prosecutions. It’s now Friday, and no-one has been able to show me an example.

The Australian has been covering the long-running feud between Dowling and the judiciary for more than a year.

On Thursday morning, NSW Premier Chris Minns took issue with that characterisation, saying calling it a feud was “overstated”. “I don’t know what the view of every judge in NSW is,” he said.

The facts tell a different story.

• Five judges have criticised Dowling’s office for running baseless sexual assault prosecutions.
• Dowling has filed complaints against three of them with the judicial commission.
• A judge has reported Dowling to the legal watchdog.

The judiciary, the NSW Bar Association and the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions were last month scheduled to hold a joint event speaking to ethical issues facing the state’s justice system.

That event has been “postponed”. No new date has been proposed.

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Legal movements

Hamilton Locke has made a series of new appointments, including promoting Melissa Doran and Timothy Zahara to partner in its workplace and employment team.

The firm has also promoted Kassandra Adams (restructuring and insolvency), Chafeka Foti (real estate). Clara Hagan (litigation), Katherine McMenamin (restructuring and insolvency), Penelope Nicholls (Hamilton Locke Private), Calyb Soekoe (finance) to special counsel.

Tariq Alardah (energy, resources, construction and infrastructure), Miriam Asar (workplace and employment), Simon Barcham (corporate and commercial), Georgina Buckley (litigation), Georgie Chard (workplace and employment), Tayla Jasson (corporate and commercial), Bobby Nader (real estate), Adam Rose (IP and technology), William Ryan (energy, resources, construction and infrastructure), Samantha Ryu (workplace and employment) have been appointed senior associates.

­­Addisons has promoted Portia Malinowski (commercial property), Rebecca Dooley (corporate and commercial) and Natalie Rodwell (environment and planning) to its partnership. The firm has also promoted Vivian Botsikas (insolvency) and Liliana Wavvaro (construction) to special counsel, Samuel Gauci (gaming and gambling) to senior foreign lawyer, and Brandon Chakty (employment), Edward Forbes (construction) and Max Jamieson (corporate and commercial) to senior associate.

Baker McKenzie has promoted Janet Cho, Lizzie Lu and Andrew Prowse to partner, and added three new special counsel: Kathleen Jeremy, Daniel McGuiness and Alexandra Stead.

A $400,000 mistake

While Australia’s lawyers are an incredibly clever bunch, they are not the world’s best mathematicians.

Those acting for the victim in an historic child sexual abuse matter in Perth were recently reminded of this fact, after massively under-calculating the damages owed to their client.

In the matter of PLA v DEF, the lawyers submitted a claim for $34,735 of interest associated with the victim’s loss of earnings.

WA District Court judge Terence Palmer, however, seemed to be the only one in court with a working calculator.

He politely objected to the calculations, finding the victim was actually owed $430,735.05.

Oops.

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