Money, money, money … Fat fees per day for Sydney silkies … Tom Bathurst’s looming departure … Ka-ching – the governor’s property clean-up … High Court suppression tussle … Theodora reports
Based on invoices we have seen a senior counsel’s bill in a straightforward commercial case was between $7,000 and $8,000 a day – and that’s between 9am to 4pm. Outside that time-range the fee was $850 an hour.
Juniors are regularly charging $4,000 to $5,000 a day to assist, and outside 9am-4pm it’s $400 an hour. All plus GST.
There are two tables here, from recent invoices sent by an SC and a junior in the same case – a recent uncomplicated commercial appeal. The first column of figures is the time spent in minutes and the second is the dollar amount.
For one day the barristers fees totalled $66,430, plus GST. The solicitor billed $35,000 and there was $5,000 in disbursements. A total of $106,430 for a day in the Supreme Court.
At $45,000 a day, that is $225,000 a week. After three weeks you’d be earning more than the CJ.
Chief Justice Tom Bathurst must be getting sick and tired of watching his old confrères from the bar scooping up all this loot.
He’s confided to our sources that he wants to retire in 2022, after 11 years or so in the saddle.
He turns 72 on St Patrick’s Day next year, and under the new rules can plough on till he’s 75.
Whoever is called gets a nice number plate …
The NSW Viceroy and former president of the Court of Appeal, HE Margaret Beazley, has cashed in a chunk of her real estate.
Her Lavender Bay house sold after two weeks on the market for a rumoured $11 million, plus. It was purchased 30 years ago for $1.3 million.
But wait, there’s more. She also has the property next door as an investment and proposes to put it on the market. According to Domain, it was purchased in 1990 for $540,000, with expectations now of fetching $6 million.
That’s total prize money of $15.2 million over three decades, plus for now she gets the Gothic pile on Macquarie Street.
Please enjoy this exchange between Justice Virginia Bell and silken Guy Reynolds. It’s all about an application to suppress the names of two defendants charged with counts of serious animal cruelty.
Zeki Roy Kadir, a Londonderry greyhound trainer, and his employee Donna Maree Grech, are accused of using live rabbits and other prey to “blood” greyhounds.
Animals Australia used hidden cameras near Kadir’s property after receiving a tip-off. The footage was given to the RSPCA and later used by the ABC’s Four Corners program, Making A Killing – which exposed the scandal of live baiting in the greyhound business and led to an inquiry by Michael McHugh QC.
Initially Kadir and Grech wanted the case to be thrown out because the evidence had been illegally obtained. That was rejected by Judge Mark Buscombe in the District Court. And here we are now in another round over suppressing the identities of the accused at trial.
Judge Buscombe excluded certain evidence, a decision which was partly overturned on appeal. Now the two accused have got special leave to appeal to the High Court on the evidence point. The trial is set for March 2020.
Reynolds argued that potential jurors from the Penrith area would know about the High Court application by the accused, which would lead to negative prejudgment at the trial. Bell J would have none of it …
The transcript shows Justice Bell drawing on every corpuscle of restraint as she gets to grips with Reynolds’ submissions.