I Spry

Ian Spry's application to rejoin Victorian bar has been met with a lengthy "please explain" ... Bar Council concerned about allegations of inappropriate behaviour ... Money to burn

The Vic Bar 'n' Grill seems to be making life difficult for old time equity and tax silk I. Spry.

Sir Charles Spry: Father of SamThis is not the I Spry who featured in the recent ABC doco-drama of that name. It's the son of the ASIO cold war warrior, who did so much to ferret out Reds under our beds.

Ian (Sam) Spry retired from the bar in 1998. He applied this year for permission to resume practising, but withdrew in May.

Subsequently, he applied again for a new ticket and to re-sign the jam roll.

However VicBar has taken a dim view of his application and fired off a heavy 15-page letter requesting he provide a whole pile of detailed information so it can gauge his fitness and properness to ply the dark arts.

The panjandrums of the bar council are miffed that Spry wrote some less than reverential letters to Chief Justice French and Justice Hayne of the High Court, basically ticking them off for deciding against him in his long-running family court stoush with the former Mrs Spry over distribution of family trust assets.  

See Kennon v Spry.   

Justinian published that correspondence. See: The Spry epistles and Spry's fresh spray.

His letters were addressed to "Mr" Hayne and "Mr" French. They asserted that "Mr" Gummow had been inimical to Spry because he had been critical of the judge's "eccentric views" in the sixth edition of his work on equitable remedies.

Further, Gummow had "leered triumphantly at me" during the hearing of the appeals.

Hayne was accused of being "grossly impolite to counsel", adopting a "sneering manner", and making "strange faces".

In his second letter to French CJ, Spry said:

"Justice Hayne abandoned his wife and children and Justice Gummow has, I am informed, an unusual personal life.

Why indeed should such people be entitled to assume the legislature's role of modifying family law statutes as the legislature sees fit? ...

The most disturbing matter about the appeals in this case is, apart from the fact that very numerous errors of law were committed, that in their various ways a number of judges deliberately disregarded their judicial oaths to apply the law ...

The dereliction has taken place under your chief justiceship. You were of course appointed, not on merit, but because you were a Western Australian when there was political agitation for a Western Australian appointee."

Among other things, the bar wants Sam to explain why he did not make any attempt to seek the removal of this content from Justinian's web site.

That's not all. The chief barmen asked him to explain the allegations made against him by Family Court judges who heard earlier proceedings involving the titanic battle over trust funds.

He was invited to address all the allegations and to explain whether his conduct might reasonably be regarded by the public and other members of the profession as "telling against your fitness to practise as counsel".

Also, if he was granted a ticket would he carry on in the same manner again?

Essentially, the Family Court said by executing an instrument to vary the Spry trust, at a time when his marriage was in trouble, he sought to put the assets of the trust out of reach of his wife and the court.

The judges did not accept Spry's claim that the alterations to the trust arrangements were as a result of an agreement between himself and his wife.

Some of the assets of the trust were pre-marriage assets.

The Family Court (Strickland J) found there was a net asset pool of almost $10 million. He said that Sam was entitled to net assets totalling $5.1 million and Mrs Spry to $4.7 million.

He set aside the instruments and dispositions that altered the trust and ordered Sam to pay his wife another $2.2 million.

In subsequent Family Court enforcement proceedings Coleman J said that Spry's eldest daughter deposed in an affidavit that her father told her in a South Yarra restaurant in January 2009 that he had cashed shares and other assets, that he would offer his wife $400,000 and if that was not accepted she would not get anything, as he intended to "disappear".

His daughter said she was concerned that he could go to jail - so what was the point of his proposed actions?

"He replied that if he thought he was about to be caught, as an absolute last resort, he would burn the money; and in the worse case, if he was sent to jail, he would go to jail rather than see our mother get anything."

The Full Family Court said that this threat to burn the cash "is hardly consistent with a person who is cognisant of the duties and obligations of a trustee".

"It does not suggest someone who has much regard to 'equitable orthodoxy'."

The bar council wanted Spry's response to allegations that he accused judges of the Family Court of "clear bias and dishonesty".

He also allegedly said to Noel Ackman QC, for Mrs Spry, that he would seek costs orders against him personally and reserved the right to make "appropriate complaints to the ethics committee".

The bar was particularly upset that Spry had failed to adopt "accepted forms of address and to show appropriate courtesy towards other lawyers, including judges during the course of your matrimonial proceedings".

He was also asked to explain why he made two applications that Strickland J in the Family Court disqualify himself on the ground of bias. Both were dismissed, the second one on the basis that it was an abuse of process, frivolous, scandalous and vexatious.

The bar supremos required Spry to provide complete copies of all his correspondence with judges which might contain criticisms of their decisions.

However, I. Spry is not alone with his view that the courts have incorrectly applied the law in relation to findings about the trust property.

As he wrote to "Mr French":

"The appeals arose largely in consequence of advice that I received from many family law quarters and senior counsel that s.79 [Family Law Act] refers (not surprisingly) to property of the parties or either of them at the time of the hearing, not at some prior time. This must be correct on ordinary principles of construction."

We asked VicBar to clarify the status of Spry's recent application to rejoin the trade, but at the time of publication no reply had been received.