VBN 145 Spring.5.indd - Victorian Bar

Registrar of the Family Court of Western
Australia.
In 1996 you returned to Melbourne and
swiftly re-established your practice here.
As counsel, your Honour exemplified
the independent barrister presenting your
client’s case with determination, and giving
no ground. It’s hard cross-examining a
grandmother who breaks down in the box.
My family law informants know of
no other counsel who managed the situation
to great effect by saying: ‘Stop your
blathering – I’m a grandmother too.’
You are well known as a connoisseur of
good food and wine, and happy to have
lunch if the circumstances allow it. On one
occasion when appearing before the late
Justice Brian Treyvaud, and being second
in the list and not getting on, his Honour
said: ‘It seems not today, you can go and
have lunch,’ which your Honour and your
opponent duly did. This happened again
on the second and third days. By the fourth
day when his Honour said the same thing,
your Honour remarked, ‘We’re getting
fatter and poorer, so would your Honour
rescind that direction.’
After only a short time back at the Bar
you were appointed to this Court. In that
time you were known as an uncompromising
and feared opponent at the Bar. One
senior barrister was heard to remark at the
time of your appointment, ‘Thank God
they have appointed her, I will never have
to be opposed to her again’.
Since taking up your position on this
Court your dedication has been prodigious.
Your Honour always started early
and finished late. You were the first judge
to arrive in chambers and usually the last
to leave. Even the recently retired Justice
Guest, who put up some show of competition
in this regard, gives you the honours.
You have been fair-minded and balanced.
You never played favourites among counsel.
You treated self-represented litigants
with dignity, listened attentively, and assisted
appropriately.
Even in the face of extraordinary provocation,
you never lost your composure.You
granted a seriously-contested adjournment
to one self-represented litigant. You then
began helpfully to suggest matters to which
she might have regard before the matter
came on again. The person interrupted,
and said: ‘You’ve granted the adjournment.
I don’t have to listen to this’, and walked
out. Even without what she then said –
very audibly – as she went out the door,
there was a contempt, which your Honour
ignored. Seemingly the litigant did not appreciate
that the adjournment did not take
the matter out of your Honour’s list. When
the matter came on next, upon seeing your
Honour was the judge, she stormed out
again. Calmly, your Honour declared the
matter undefended, and heard it.
The only criticism you have of those
who appeared before you was if they had
not done their homework. You expected
competent, professional work and soon
received it.
The Court hasn’t had a defaulters’ list for
some years – but when it did, you were
perceived as having the qualities best suited
to motivate practitioners who had failed
to comply with interlocutory orders – to
put, so to speak, the fear of God in them.
One barrister is convinced that, when
displeased with his conduct of matters in
your Court, you made sure to give him the
hottest curry when he came to your house
for one of the famous curry dinners of
which Mr Burke will speak.
You were the first to volunteer for the
duty list cases if your own case settled or
for some other reason finished early. You
were generous with your time to outside
family law organizations, giving your extensive
knowledge to research, to papers
and to help in any way you could.
At the Bar not one of your Honour’s
clients left the Court without knowing that
everything had been done to present their
case in the best possible light, and on the
Bench, while some with an unmeritorious
case may have left disgruntled, they could
not but know that they had had a fair and
proper hearing.
You have been a fair, and conscientious,
and hard-working judge, and will be sadly
missed from the Court.
On behalf of the Australian Bar Association
and the Victorian Bar, I wish your
Honour a long and satisfying retirement.
22 VICTORIAN BAR NEWS Spring 2008