Salvador Dali, 1954

Delay in the delivery of judgments is a curse of the justice system. 

Parties suffer extended anxiety; lawyers are in a quandary; bills have been dispatched; court deadlines are trashed; discipline erode; process is abused. 

It shows that chief justices are not on top of getting slow coaches into line and organising more time for judgment preparation. It’s an all-round bad look.  

Those are some of the reasons Justinian has focussed on judges who drag the chain. Here is our run-down of recent instances of judicial officers under the spell of Morpheus … 

Justice Stephen Southwood from the NT Supremes has set a record with a delay of five-and-a-half years for delivery of reasons on an interlocutory point. 

Flynn v Thompson concerned charges of domestic violence and the role of the Local Court (Criminal Procedure) Act. There was a tussle over whether both counts of aggravated assault can be joined in the same information. 

Southwood decided that the charges could be dealt with together, where they relate to the same defendant and arise from the same or associated circumstances.

The hearing date was August 7, 2018, and judgment was delivered on January 23, 2024. 

The judge seems to be back at work after suffering ill-health in late December 2022 or early January 2023. Even if we deduct a year for recovery, the remaining four-and-a-half years is still a whopper of a delay.

See: Steven Flynn v Fabian Thompson 

Here’s a list of HH’s judgments which have been reserved for six months or more. 

There’s also news around the traps in Darwin about someone appealing a lengthy driving disqualification. However, the period of disqualification has by now expired, and Southwood J is yet to decide the appeal.  

See other Southwood-related news: 

Darwin’s glacier 

Star of the sea emits a wrinkle  

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Justice Darren Jackson, a Perth based Federal Court judge, has loomed into view with a 2-year, 5-months turnaround in an iron ore miner’s insurance claim. 

The mine was located at Koolan Island, off the Kimberly coast. The sea wall that kept the ocean at bay failed and the main part of the operations were flooded. 

The hearing started in July 2021 and as a Christmas present to the parties the reasons appeared on December 21, 2023. 

HH said it was complex and he spent 761 paragraphs over 192 pages in spelling it out. Even so, he said: 

“… It is not possible to state the outcome succinctly at this point. The parties agreed that when these reasons are delivered, they will confer in an attempt to agree the amount of Infrassure’s remaining liability, if any.” 

See: Koolan Iton Ore Pty Ltd v Infrassure Ltd (No 2) 

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David Thomas, another Federal Court judge, coughed-up four late migration judgments at the end of last year. 

EFM19 v Minister for Immigration. Hearing September 2, 2022. Judgment December 15, 2023. 15 months. 

CZQL v Minister for Immigration. Hearing June 1, 2022. Judgment December 15, 2023. 17½ months. 

BKB20 v Minister for Immigration. Hearing June 14, 2022. Judgment December 13, 2023. 18 months.

Kolora v Minister for Immigration: Hearing March 14, 2022. Judgment December 13, 2023. 21 months. 

The applicants in three of the four cases were unsuccessful. 

Thomas is a former Queensland Supreme Court judge and ex-president of the AAT. 

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At the Circus Court things are cracking along at a snail’s pace. Chief judge Two Wigs Willy Alstergren is not immune, even though he’s lending a hand to reduce the backlog.

In DST18 v Minister for Immigration, the hearing was on November 19, 2022, with CJ delivering judgment 13 months later, on December 14, 2023. 

He said at para 62: 

“The Court will hear the parties as to progression of the matter towards final hearing.”

That will come as a relief to the applicant who filed his application on November 11, 2020. 

Judge Antoni Lucev, of the Perth registry of the FCFC, pointed to the problem of delay. 

In BJP16 v Minister for Immigration, referencing Two Wigs, he said: 

“Delays in the hearing of judicial review migration cases in the court’s Melbourne registry are notorious.” 

Even so, Lucev took over a year to deliver his judgment in BJP16. 

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One of our regulars, Justice Larissa Strk, from the WA Supremes, came down with a judgment on January 19, 2024, in a case she heard between September 20 and October 1, 2021. A hiatus of more than two years and two months.

It was all about the unconscionable conduct of a landlord in the termination of a lease, where the plaintiff was locked out of the premises, prevented from trading and plant and equipment damaged during its removal.