New HCA Judgments

Three new judgments were published today. The decisions were all unanimous and fairly brief. We'll have the summaries up soon but for now:

Dupas v The Queen [2010] HCA 20

The Court dismissed an appeal from Peter Dupas. Dupas was successful in the Court of Appeal at having his conviction set aside for the murder of Mersina Halvagis. A retrial was ordered. Dupas now argues that the retrial should be stayed indefinitely because the adverse pre-trial publicity has prevented the possibility of having a fair jury trial. The Court found that in the circumstances (and in all but the rarest of circumstances) any unfairness can be relieved against by the trial judge during the course of the trial. No stay was ordered.

One notable topic of discussion is the constitutional protection of the capacity of a (Chapter III) court to prevent abuses of its processes (see [15]).

[[UPDATE: a Lamp Post Summary can now be found here.]] 

Hogan v Australian Crime Commission [2010] HCA 21

During its investigation of a certain fraudulent tax scheme, the Australian Crime Commission required the production of documents relating to the appellant, Australian personality Paul Hogan. Those documents were the subject of suppression orders. Upon application of Nationwide News and Fairfax, those suppression orders were set aside and those news companies were permitted to inspect the documents. The Court found that the trial judge did not err in setting aside the suppression orders or permitting their inspection.

There is some interesting commentary on the nature of an appeal from a suppression order as well as the right to privacy/confidentiality in Australia (or as they understand it: “the absence of a right in any other person to view such documents and things”: at [38]-[39]).

[[UPDATE: a Lamp Post Summary can now be found here.]]

Wicks v State Rail Authority of New South Wales; Sheehan v State Rail Authority of New South Wales [2010] HCA 22

This case concerns a claim in negligence for pure mental harm suffered by police who witnessed the aftermath of the Waterfall Rail Accident in 2003. Legislation in NSW prevents a court from imposing a duty of care in such claims unless inter alia, “the plaintiff witnessed, at the scene, the victim being killed, injured or put in peril”. The question for the Court was whether this section imposed a criterion of temporal connection that required the plaintiffs to actually witness the accident rather than merely the aftermath. The Court allowed the appeals, stating that the victims were still in “peril” until after they had been rescued by the plaintiffs. Therefore that section did not apply and the case was remitted for hearing in accordance with the Court's decision.

On a side note: the law of mental harm to witnesses in negligence is the example that Ronald Dworkin gave in his book Law’s Empire when discussing ‘Law as Integrity’ and the omnipotent judge Hercules. This case takes on some interesting levels when you read it with Hercules in mind.