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Suing for defamation - it's such a good idea ...Federal Court of Australia ... Sydney barrister loses bid for extension of time to bring appeal over decision allowing Giles George to intervene to seek an equitable lien over costs ... Falling out between barrister and firm after successful defamation action ... No error or procedural unfairness ... From Stephen Murray at the Gazette of Law & Journalism ... Read more >> 

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Major victory for the media as public interest defence established in large and lengthy defamation case brought by orthopaedic surgeon ... Al Muderis v Nine Network, Fairfax and The Age ... Good journalism wins the day ... More >> 

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Postcard from London ... Summertime - And the living' is easy ... Votes for 16-year olds ... Paralegal's theft by pen ... Spy helping British intelligence from his job at Border Force ... Super-injunction comes out of the shadows ... Feed them strawberries and cream ... Floyd Alexander-Hunt files from Blighty ... Read more >> 

"I've stopped six wars in the last - I'm averaging about a war a month. But the last three were very close together. India and Pakistan, and a lot of them. Congo was just and Rwanda was just done, but you probably know I won't go into it very much, because I don't know the final numbers yet. I don't know. Numerous people were killed, and I was dealing with two countries that we get along with very well, very different countries from certain standpoints. They've been fighting for 500 years, intermittently, and we solved that war. You probably saw it just came out over the wire, so we solved it ..."

President Donald Trump at a meeting in Scotland with UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer ... July 28, 2025 ... Read more flatulence ... 


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Home Duties ... The dumping of Attorney General Mark Dreyfus ... Behind the scenes ... Bastardry among the brothers ... Unfinished business ... Family law, privacy ... Considerable policy and legislative results ... Here's Michelle Rowland as AG ... What are her priors? ... Polly Peck reports from the Gallery ... Read more >> 


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Abolish silks ... Sydney SC writes to the editor calling for abolition of the silk system ... Appointments are anachronistic ... It's not a matter of ability, only notability ... Secret blackballing ... "Corrupt" process ... Confessions from an insider who played the game ... From Justinian's Archive, October 24, 2002 ... Read more >> 


 

 

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Tuesday
Jun022015

Richard McHugh

Richard McHugh is a Sydney silk from a distiguishged legal and political family. He did his masters at Yale and worked for a time at a Wall Street law shop ... He used to appear regularly in the defamation courts, but has shifted his focus to commercial law, most recently appearing for Ginia Rinehart in the big family trust stoush ... A keen photographer he has turned his attention to writing ... Charlie Anderson's General Theory of Lying, published by Penguin, is his first novel ... Here he is, on Justinian's couch 

McHugh: not enough room for all the regretsDescribe yourself in three words.  

Beyond my control.

What are you currently reading? 

Steve Toltz's "Quicksand" and (since 2012) David Foster Wallace's "Infinite Jest".

What's your favourite film?

Apocalypse Now.

Who has been the most influential person in your life, and why? 

My mother. I live in her shadow. Every day I struggle to get out from under it.

What is your favourite piece of music?

Blur - "Song 2" or Radiohead, "Electioneering".

What is in your refrigerator? 

Cream and full cream milk for making ice cream. Two rolls of Verichrome Pan 120 black and white film, expired in 2002.

What is your favourite website?

The Analogue Photography Users Group.

If you could change your past, what part of it would you change?

You don't have the space to accommodate my regrets.

What is your guiltiest pleasure?

Gossip Girl.

Why did you want to be a lawyer? 

That's the wrong question. I was born to be a lawyer.

What other occupation would you have liked to pursue? 

Member for Wentworth, or starting centre for the Los Angeles Lakers.  It would have been nice to combine them.

If you were on death row, what would be your request for your last meal? 

Chicken schnitzel.

What is Charlie Anderson's General Theory of Lying telling us? 

That the professional class is more entertaining than we are given credit for.

From where did you draw the inspiration for the novel? 

The basic package - a highly-educated ever-so-slightly-narcissistic professional couple devoted to their children - is everywhere I look. 

If you were a foodstuff, what would you be?

Dark chocolate. There's only so much you can take.

What human quality do you most distrust?

Vanity.

What would you change about Australia?

Its location. I would move it 12,000 kilometres closer to Rome.

Whom or what do you consider overrated?

Judicial case management.

What would your epitaph say?

"It might have gone better if he'd tried harder."

What comes into your mind when you shut your eyes and think of the word "law"? 

A tax invoice. 

Readers can order the book at Booktopia and Bookworld.

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