The Banksia retirement home … Bar Prez’s warning about excessive fees … VCAT’s building list in disarray … Cases sent to the never-never … Tasmanian government’s High Court strategy – two is better than one … Ron Brierley knows nothing … Anthony Mason’s mid-nonagenarian celebrations get jammed … Theodora reports on the latest Goings On … 

As if it wasn’t horrible enough for Norman O’Bryan SC and Michael Symons to be defenestrated from Yarraside’s jam roll, they also had to endure an admonition from C. Blanden QC, president of Vic’s Bar ‘n’ Grill. 

In a missive to the rank and file about the Banksia proceedings, Blanden said he “accepts” Justice John Dixon’s characterising of the conduct of O’Bryan and Symons. Furthermore, he “condemns” the conduct.

That’s a great relief for the judge. 

O’Bryan and Symonds were found to have acted dishonestly and greedily and let their fees in the Banksia class action blow out beyond what they could hope to get away with. 

It’s not all gloom and doom. Blanders mentioned that the court didn’t have any problems with the “capacity of the legal system to self-regulate”. 

According to the the bar president, the court also noted that the “public duty to always engender and protect the proper administration of justice remains as deeply rooted in the legal profession as it is in the judges …” 

Ignore the deracination by people like O’Bryan and Symons, because “egregious conduct” is “extreme and exceedingly rare”. 

For heavens sake, let’s not mention Nicola Gobbo. 

The important reminder from the pen of the bar president is to use “reasonable endeavours” to keep costs “reasonable and proportionate to the complexity or importance of the issues in dispute and the amount in dispute”. 

That should still leave plenty of room for charging eye-watering fees. 

News from VCAT’s building list is grim

Last month the tribunal discovered that a Covid positive case had visited the VCAT’s HQ headquarters at 55 King Street, Melbourne, and most if not all the staff went into isolation.

Even though the tribunal has been operating remotely with members working from home since April last year, the Covid alarm caused a huge problem.

Much of VCAT’s files are still paper based, and registry staff have to be located in the building in order to run the remote zoom hearings. 

It’s understood that every morning a cavalry of couriers delivers paper files to VCAT members’ homes from the tribunal’s headquarters so they can conduct hearings.

 All of the various lists in VCAT were affected by the shutdown, but the building and property list seem to be the worst affected, conducting almost no hearings for three weeks.

One lawyer tells us that he had three mediations and a five-day hearing adjourned into the ether with no date set as to when they might happen. 

The five-day hearing was one of the early Covid-19 casualties, originally being listed in April 2020, and it was one of the first to be adjourned. 

Now that it has been adjourned again, it’s unlikely to get on until late 2022 – and this was a case commenced in 2018, giving a four-year gestation between commencement and hearing. 

It is now so long in the tooth that some of the witnesses can’t remember anything about the issues in dispute. Lawyers are reporting that if a party asks for a compulsory conference, which usually takes a day, there are actually no dates until June-July next year. 

The situation is worse for final hearings, which can take between five and nine days. The wait time for a hearing of that length is now November-December next year. 

Parties have been told a day before a scheduled trial, booked-in more than eight months ago, that a member is not available to take the case, and there won’t be one before October 2022. 

Other are even unluckier, with hearing dates set for January-March 2023.

It’s a desperate schmozzle and we’ll follow-up with more on this story soon. 

Bell v State of Tasmania has been heard by the Saloon and judgment is reserved.  

According to this extract from the Sydney Law Review, Mr Bell supplied a controlled drug to a person under 18 years or ago – except at the time he thought the receiver of the substance was over 18. 

The trial judge did not leave consideration of honest and reasonable mistake with the jury because even though Bell would have been committing a less serious offence for supply to someone over 18, it was still an offence. 

Their Hons heard it by video connection earlier this month. 

On the second day after the Tasmanian DPP, Daryl Coates SC, made his submission and sat down, the Tas solicitor general, Michael O’Farrell SC, then loomed into view. 

No sooner had O’Farrell said “may it please the court”, than Justice Michelle Gordon intervened: 

Two pot-shots at the same target has a better chance than one – presumably.

Ron Brierley pleaded guilty to possession of tens of thousands of images of child sex abuse, including children as young as four. He admitted using the images for sexual gratification. 

According to the newspapers, his barrister Tim Game SC told the sentencing judge, Sarah Huggett in the District Court, that his client didn’t know that to possess images of this nature was illegal and that he should not be sent to prison. 

Fortunately, Judge Huggett didn’t swallow that breathtaking try-on, saying: 

“For decades, he had been an intelligent and high-functioning businessman.” 

She slotted the old wretch for at least seven months. 

Justinian wine correspondent and crime defence barrister, Gabriel Wendler, has created a batch of Seville orange marmalade to mark the 96th birthday of former chief justice Sir Anthony Mason. 

Jars of the delicious conserve have been disturbed throughout the legal profession and to retired members of the judiciary. 

One connoisseur describes the creation as tangy on the tongue, mature yet lively, with chunky top-notes and a long finish on the palate.