Thursday, September 28, 2006

Nerdhog Day!

Dear Diary, today I shall do the following:

Try to get a seat watching Labor's latest recruit and other gun silk argue over my Bank and the future of Steve Vizard, among other things, here.

Then I shall enter the tomb-like library at the centre of the Supreme Court to have a wee read of some delightfully thrilling material on the Rule in Browne v Dunn. Where does a lawyer go to find a summary fit for publication? Why, Wiki of course (quoting Lord Herschell):
My Lords, I cannot help saying that it seems to me to be absolutely essential to the proper conduct of a cause, where it is intended to suggest that a witness is not speaking the truth on a particular point, to direct his attention to the fact by some questions put in cross-examination showing that that imputation is intended to be made, and not to take his evidence and pass it by as a matter altogether unchallenged, and then, when it is impossible for him to explain, as perhaps he might have been able to do if such questions had been put to him, the circumstances which it is suggested indicate that the story he tells ought not to be believed, to argue that he is a witness unworthy of credit.
Substitute they for he and you find the passage applies to all human beings. Easy really, I'm gonna read another 30 or so pages elaborating on that rule from a NSW tax case which I've memorised as Allied Pastoral Something v Comissioner of Taxation [1983] 1 NSWR at 800-odd.

Now that's a legal mind you'd want in your corner, hey? Don't answer, moving along...

Later, I shall obtain a present for my beautiful pregnacious wife from the brand new house of trash and garbage on Collins that just happens to make extraordinarily quaffable doughnuts.

2 comments:

Jeremy said...

Sorry, why are you researching Browne v Dunn again?

Armagnac Esq said...

See final paragraphs of previous post...

In a bizarre fluke I went along to watch a bit of the Westpac v Hilliard case and one of the things Dreyfus QC pulled out in the hour or so I sat there was a Brown v Dunn argument...