In Insurance Australia Ltd t/a NRMA Insurance v Milton (No 2), the New South Wales Court of Appeal ordered a solicitor acting for an insurer in judicial review proceedings not to charge his client with more than 50% of the costs and disbursements associated with preparing the Blue appeal books because the books included a large quantity of unnecessary material.  In reaching this decision, the Court of Appeal rejected an attempt by the solicitor to have the Court reformulate parts of its earlier judgment in which members of the Court had commented about the wastage and proposed orders against the solicitor.

The Court of Appeal said that the order made against the solicitor was probably favourable to the solicitor in the circumstances of the case but considered it appropriate given that it was the first occasion on which such an order had been made. Read further about the case here.

In R v Curtis (No 3), McCallum J of the Supreme Court of New South Wales sentenced Mr Curtis who had been found guilty by a jury of an offence of conspiracy to commit an offence of insider trading contrary to ss 1043A(1)(d)  and 1311(1)(a) of the Corporations Act 2001 (Cth) to two years of imprisonment with a recognisance release order directing his release after serving one year of imprisonment.

The Crown case against Mr Curtis had rested primarily on the evidence of Mr Curtis’s co-conspirator, Mr Hartman. Mr Hartman had previously pleaded guilty to a number of insider trading offences not involving Mr Curtis as well as to a number of ‘tipping’ offences arising from the trading he had undertaken with Mr Curtis and had served a term of imprisonment for these offences. Read further about the case here.

In Calvo v Ellimark Pty Ltd, the New South Wales Court of Appeal held that the former clients of a solicitor were, by reason of the solicitor’s conduct in refusing to provide tax invoices and itemised bills of costs during a costs assessment process, entitled to proceed on the assumption or expectation that the solicitor would not seek any additional legal costs from them. The Court of Appeal further held that there was detrimental reliance by the former clients on that assumption or expectation and that the appropriate remedy in the circumstances of the case was permanent injunctive relief to issue against the solicitor taking any further steps to recover costs from the former clients.  Read further about the case here.

The Supreme Court of Victoria in Onebev Pty Ltd v Encore Beverages Pty Ltd has held that s 36(2) of the Acts Interpretation Act 1901 (Cth) which deals with how time periods are to be calculated extended the 21 day period in which a debtor company could make an application to set aside a creditor’s statutory demand under s 459G of the Corporations Act 2001 (Cth). The last day for making the application was found to be a “holiday”, being ‘Easter Tuesday’ when the Supreme Court Registry was ‘effectively’ closed and, accordingly, the application could be made the next day. That the application could have been filed in the Federal Court Registry which was open and operating as usual on Easter Tuesday was not considered to render the provision inapplicable. Read further about the case here.

The High Court of Australia in Attwells v Jackson Lalic Lawyers Pty Limited has unanimously declined to reconsider its previous decisions in Giannarelli v Wraith and D’Orta-Ekenaike v Victoria Legal Aid which stated that, at common law, an advocate could not be sued by his or her client for negligence in work done in court, or work done out of court which led to a decision affecting the conduct of the case in court, or work which was intimately connected with work in court.

However, a majority of the High Court held that the advocate’s immunity from suit did not extend to negligent advice which led to the settlement of a case by agreement between the parties because the advice to settle did not contribute to the judicial determination of the proceedings. The circumstance that the settlement was embodied in consent orders made by the court did not alter this conclusion.

The majority’s decision is a rejection of the more expansive view of the scope of the immunity which has been applied by many courts in recent years. Read a detailed summary of the case here.