Shuaiqi/CLSum huggingface dataset:
HIGH COURT OF AUSTRALIA 17 June 2004 MINISTER FOR IMMIGRATION AND MULTICULTURAL AND INDIGENOUS AFFAIRS v SGLB The High Court of Australia today upheld an appeal by the Minister in a case involving an Iranian man’s application for a protection visa. SGLB arrived in Australia by boat in June 2000. He has given different versions of why he left Iran, initially saying he hoped to find a job and a wife and a less monotonous life with no mention of persecution and incarceration. But when he applied for a protection visa he said his family had suffered discrimination, detention and torture because they were Arab in a largely Persian nation. Later, when presented with evidence that Iranian authorities did not discriminate against Arabs, SGLB said he faced harm due to his political opinions and involvement in demonstrations rather than his ethnicity. His application for a protection visa was rejected in December 2000. This rejection has been the subject of numerous proceedings in the Refugee Review Tribunal, the Federal Court and the Federal Magistrates Court. In one proceeding SGLB told the RRT he faced harm as a member of the Hamid tribe which was associated with Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war. In a later proceeding, a differently constituted tribunal was prepared to accept SGLB had post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) which affected his ability to give evidence but, based on a psychologist’s report that he did not have a well-founded fear of persecution for either ethnic or political reasons and other evidence, the RRT affirmed the decision to reject the visa application. An application to the Federal Court for judicial review was transferred to the Federal Magistrates Court, which dismissed the application. He then appealed to the Federal Court which was constituted by Justice Bradley Selway, who was also dealing with a separate application in the Court’s original jurisdiction. In the appeal, Justice Selway identified three flaws in the RRT’s decision: no evidence on which the RRT could be satisfied SGLB was suffering from PTSD; no evidence to enable the RRT to assess the effects of PTSD on his credibility; and a failure by the RRT to satisfy itself that he was competent to take part in proceedings. The Minister appealed to the High Court, arguing that the RRT had not erred. In the appeal, SGLB contended that the errors identified by Justice Selway amounted to a denial of procedural fairness, but the Court rejected this contention as the RRT had sought to accommodate SGLB and his concerns during proceedings. The Court held that the RRT’s acceptance of PTSD was actually beneficial to SGLB. The Court held there was also evidence before the RRT for it to assess SGLB’s reliability and the RRT was not obliged to obtain further medical or psychiatric reports. However the Court rejected the Minister’s submission that in any event the RRT’s decision was protected against judicial review unless the RRT had not acted in good faith. The Court, by a 4-1 majority, allowed the appeal. The Minister is to pay SGLB’s costs in accordance with the terms of the grant of special leave to appeal.
HIGH COURT OF AUSTRALIA 4 March 2004 HONG PHUC TRUONG v THE QUEEN A man found guilty of kidnapping and murder was lawfully tried and convicted even though he had been extradited from the United Kingdom on charges of conspiracy to kidnap and to murder, the High Court of Australia held today. Mr Truong was extradited from Britain to face charges of conspiracy to kidnap and conspiracy to murder but was tried in 2000 in the Victorian Supreme Court for kidnap and murder. He was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment for murder and to 15 years’ imprisonment for kidnapping. On appeal, Mr Truong claimed his trial contravened section 42 of the Extradition Act which prohibits the trial of an extradited person for any offence other than one for which they were returned, a point not raised at his trial. The Court of Appeal dismissed an appeal and Mr Truong appealed to the High Court. Mr Truong, a Vietnamese national, allegedly headed a drug trafficking network whose operations included Hong Kong, Vietnam and Australia. In March 1996, through his sister Truong Thi Van who lived in Melbourne, he met Ha Que Thi Ha, a wealthy Vietnam-based exporter of clothing and footwear. Mr Truong and Mrs Van allegedly tried to recruit Mrs Ha to bring heroin into Australia with her clothing shipments and later demanded $400,000 in protection money. Her refusals were met with threats of harm to her and her family. After Mr Truong left Australia, two Vietnamese criminals living in the United States, arrived in Melbourne. They allegedly kidnapped Mrs Ha’s 21- year-old son Le Anh Tuan from his home in Glen Waverley. His body was found a few weeks later in an aqueduct in Noble Park. The cause of death was a single gunshot to the head. Although Mr Truong was extradited in 1997 on charges that included the kidnapping and murder conspiracy charges but not the substantive charges, four members of the High Court held that in the circumstances of this case that was immaterial, as the acts pointing to the existence of the conspiracies included the actual kidnapping and murder. Both the conspiracy offences and the substantive offences relied on the same evidence. Additionally, three members of the Court held that even if the course of proceedings had been inconsistent with section 42 that did not enable Mr Truong to have his convictions set aside. The High Court, by a 6-1 majority, dismissed the appeal.
HIGH COURT OF AUSTRALIA 9 September 2004 JOHN DAVID RICH AND MARK ALAN SILBERMANN v AUSTRALIAN SECURITIES AND INVESTMENTS COMMISSION Proceedings seeking an order disqualifying a person from managing corporations were proceedings for a penalty, so defendants could claim privilege against exposure to penalties to enable them to resist discovery of documents in pre-trial procedures, the High Court of Australia held today. In civil proceedings in the New South Wales Supreme Court, ASIC, pursuant to the Corporations Act, sought declarations that Mr Rich and Mr Silbermann had contravened their duties as directors of One.Tel, orders that they pay One.Tel $93 million in compensation, and orders disqualifying them from managing a corporation. ASIC also sought an interlocutory order that the pair make discovery of documents, but they contended that the material to be disclosed was covered by the privilege against exposure to penalties. Supreme Court Justice Robert Austin ordered Mr Rich and Mr Silbermann to hand over the documents and the NSW Court of Appeal by majority dismissed an appeal. Both Justice Austin and the Court of Appeal held that ASIC’s proceedings were not penal and that disqualification orders were protective rather than punitive. An appeal from Mr Rich and Mr Silbermann to the High Court was heard on 22 April. The Court, by a 6-1 majority, allowed the appeal with costs and ordered ASIC’s application for discovery be dismissed. The Court’s written reasons for judgment were handed down today. ASIC had submitted that because no pecuniary penalty order was sought – only declarations of contravention, compensation orders and disqualification orders – Mr Rich and Mr Silbermann were not exposed to penalties. Mr Rich and Mr Silbermann argued the declarations of contravention and disqualification orders amounted to penalties or forfeiture within the meaning of the privilege to resist discovery of documents. The High Court accepted their argument. The majority held that for ASIC to seek an order disqualifying persons from managing a corporation on the ground that they have contravened the law is to seek a penalty or forfeiture. The order is sought by a regulatory authority, it is founded on demonstration of a contravention of the law, it requires the vacating of office in a corporation, and it imposes a continuing disability for the duration of the order. The majority held that a distinction between “punitive” and “protective” purposes was unhelpful as disqualification may serve both. The question was not what purpose a disqualification order served but what was the nature of the order sought. Whether proceedings had a purpose of protecting the public was not determinative. Seeking to classify proceedings as either protective or penal invited error as the categories were not mutually exclusive and proceedings may bear several characters. Once it was determined that the proceedings exposed a person to penalty or forfeiture, the proper course was to refuse any order for discovery. The civil proceedings brought by ASIC against the One.Tel directors remain on foot in the NSW Supreme Court.
HIGH COURT OF AUSTRALIA Public Information Officer 29 May, 2003 KENNETH FRANCIS STANTON v THE QUEEN The High Court of Australia today dismissed Mr Stanton’s appeal against his conviction for the wilful murder of his estranged wife, Marie Ann Stanton, in Lake Clifton, south of Perth, in March 1999. The issue in Mr Stanton’s trial in the Western Australian Supreme Court was intent. He did not deny shooting his wife, but said that when he went to her house with a shotgun loaded with heavy-gauge ammunition he merely intended to frighten her and make her see sense in their Family Court dispute and did not intend to kill her or to cause her grievous bodily harm. The jury was directed that it could find Mr Stanton guilty of either wilful murder, murder or manslaughter, or it could find him not guilty. The only verdicts realistically open on the evidence were wilful murder or manslaughter. The trial judge, Justice Robert Anderson, directed the jury to first consider wilful murder. If they were unanimously of the view that Mr Stanton was not guilty of the offence, they should consider murder, and if they unanimously believed he was not guilty of murder they could then consider manslaughter. If they unanimously found him not guilty of manslaughter they should acquit him. Mr Stanton argued Justice Anderson should not have prescribed the order in which the jury should have addressed alternative verdicts, and in addition the directions he gave effectively reversed the onus of proof. The WA Court of Criminal Appeal held that Justice Anderson erred in his directions to the jury and in his answer later to a jury question but, by majority, decided there was no miscarriage of justice. The High Court, by a 3-2 majority, dismissed the appeal. It held that, taken as a whole, there was no error in Justice Anderson’s directions to the jury.
HIGH COURT OF AUSTRALIA 17 August 2017 TRANSPORT ACCIDENT COMMISSION v MARIA KATANAS [2017] HCA 32 Today the High Court unanimously dismissed an appeal from the Court of Appeal of the Supreme Court of Victoria concerning the narrative test of serious injury under s 93(17) of the Transport Accident Act 1986 (Vic) ("the narrative test") laid down in Humphries v Poljak [1992] 2 VR 129. The respondent was involved in a motor vehicle accident in July 2010. Following the accident, she suffered a range of psychological symptoms including lowered mood, nightmares and daytime thoughts of the accident. She also reported restrictions in her social pursuits and difficulties in concentration. The respondent received psychological treatment, and, in April 2013, she was prescribed anti-depressant medication and began to attend on a psychiatrist. Medical evidence indicated that the respondent had suffered a post-traumatic stress disorder and either a major depressive disorder or an adjustment disorder which was substantially related to the accident. On 16 April 2013, the respondent filed an originating motion in the County Court of Victoria seeking leave to commence common law proceedings for a serious injury under s 93(4) of the Transport Accident Act. The primary judge refused leave, holding that, although the respondent had received considerable treatment and medication, she had not been an inpatient in any psychiatric institution "nor suffered the more extreme symptoms of psychological trauma". The respondent appealed to the Court of Appeal contending, inter alia, that the primary judge misdirected himself as to the objective assessment of the severity of her mental disorder by conceiving of severity solely in terms of the extent of treatment necessitated by the disorder. The majority of the Court of Appeal held that although the extent of treatment may cast light on whether the disorder was "severe", it was only one among a range of considerations that needed to be taken into account. By grant of special leave, the appellant appealed to the High Court on the ground that the majority of the Court of Appeal displaced the part of the narrative test from Humphries v Poljak concerning the evaluation of the instant case against the range or spectrum of comparable cases. The High Court unanimously held that the majority of the Court of Appeal did not err in holding that the range as formulated by the primary judge was incomplete because it had regard only to one criterion of the comparative severity of a mental disorder, namely, the extent of treatment. The majority of the Court of Appeal rightly emphasised that, in assessing severity by comparison to the range of comparable cases, a judge must identify and bring to account all of the relevant factors. Accordingly, the majority of the Court of Appeal had not departed from the narrative test. The High Court declined to entertain an alternative contention put by the appellant that the majority of the Court of Appeal had misunderstood the primary judge's formulation of the range.
HIGH COURT OF AUSTRALIA 27 April 2005 STEPHEN BLACKADDER v RAMSEY BUTCHERING SERVICE PTY LTD An Australian Industrial Relations Commission (AIRC) order for reinstatement of an employee required the employer to provide actual work to the reinstated employee, the High Court of Australia held today. Mr Blackadder, a boner at Ramsey’s abattoir in Grafton, was sacked in September 1999 after he refused to undertake hot neck boning instead of his usual hindquarter boning of pre-chilled carcasses. Hot neck boning involves freeing meat from the bones from the neck to the ribs and requires greater rotational force of the elbow and wrist than general boning. Mr Blackadder had an old injury to his right elbow affecting movement in that arm. He refused to do hot neck boning because he had no experience or training in it. He may therefore have been a danger to himself and others in undertaking that work. In March 2000, AIRC Commissioner Bob Redmond found the termination to be unfair, harsh and unreasonable. He ordered that Mr Blackadder be reinstated with all his entitlements and that his lost salary and entitlements be restored. Ramsey wrote to him to say he was required to have a medical assessment before resuming physical work. When Mr Blackadder refused to undergo the examination, because he said Commissioner Redmond’s order did not require it, and he was ready, willing and able to resume his previous boning work, Ramsey stopped his wages. In July 2000 Mr Blackadder commenced action in the Federal Court of Australia to enforce the AIRC orders. Ramsey resumed paying him but refused to provide him with work and arranged a medical examination, to which he was prepared to submit, for February 2001. However the doctor refused to examine him because Mr Blackadder insisted on his wife being present. Ramsey again stopped his wages. Mr Blackadder eventually underwent a medical examination in April 2001. Ramsey resumed paying him but still refused to provide him with work. In the Federal Court in May 2001, Justice Rodney Madgwick held that reinstatement included giving Mr Blackadder his usual work and ordered Ramsey to let him resume chilled boning work. The Full Court of the Federal Court, by majority, allowed in part an appeal by Ramsey. It held that an employer had no obligation to provide work unless a contract of employment specifically required it. The Full Court left the reinstatement order intact except for specifying that he was to work as a boner in the chilled boning room, meaning he could be directed to do hot neck boning. The High Court unanimously allowed an appeal by Mr Blackadder. It held that to pay him, but not to restore him to his usual position in the workplace, was not to reinstate him. The AIRC had power under the Workplace Relations Act to make an order requiring the employer to provide a reinstated worker with actual work to do and the Federal Court had power to enforce an order. The Court held that Mr Blackadder had to be given back his job, performing the same duties on the same terms and conditions, and that reinstatement was not conditional on a medical examination.
HIGH COURT OF AUSTRALIA 9 February 2022 ZG OPERATIONS & ANOR v JAMSEK & ORS [2022] HCA 2 Today, the High Court allowed an appeal from a judgment of the Full Court of the Federal Court of Australia. The appeal concerned whether two truck drivers were engaged by a company as employees or independent contractors. Between 1977 and 2017, Mr Jamsek and Mr Whitby ("the respondents") were engaged as truck drivers by a business run by the second appellant ("the company"). The respondents were initially engaged as employees of the company and drove the company's trucks. However, in 1985 or 1986, the company offered the respondents the opportunity to "become contractors" and purchase their own trucks. The respondents agreed to the new arrangement and set up partnerships with their respective wives. Each partnership executed written contracts with the company for the provision of delivery services, purchased trucks from the company, paid the maintenance and operational costs of those trucks, invoiced the company for its delivery services, and was paid by the company for those services. Income from the work performed for the company was declared as partnership income for the purposes of income tax and split between each respondent and his wife. The respondents commenced proceedings in the Federal Court of Australia seeking declarations in respect of certain entitlements alleged to be owed to them pursuant to the Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth), the Superannuation Guarantee (Administration) Act 1992 (Cth) and the Long Service Leave Act 1955 (NSW). The respondents claimed to be owed those entitlements on the basis that they were employees of the company. The primary judge concluded that the respondents were not employees, and instead were independent contractors. The Full Court overturned that decision and held that, having regard to the "substance and reality" of the relationship, the respondents were employees. The High Court unanimously held that the respondents were not employees of the company. A majority of the Court held that, consistently with the approach adopted in Construction, Forestry, Maritime, Mining and Energy Union v Personnel Contracting Pty Ltd [2022] HCA 1, where parties have comprehensively committed the terms of their relationship to a written contract, the efficacy of which is not challenged on the basis that it is a sham or is otherwise ineffective under general law or statute, the characterisation of that relationship as one of employment or otherwise must proceed by reference to the rights and obligations of the parties under that contract. After 1985 or 1986, the contracting parties were the partnerships and the company. The contracts between the partnerships and the company involved the provision by the partnerships of both the use of the trucks owned by the partnerships and the services of a driver to drive those trucks. The context in which the first contract was entered into involved the company's refusal to continue to employ the drivers and the company's insistence that the only relationship between the drivers and the company be a contract for the carriage of goods. This relationship was not a relationship of employment.
HIGH COURT OF AUSTRALIA Public Information Officer 2 October 2008 MINISTER ADMINISTERING THE CROWN LANDS ACT v NSW ABORIGINAL LAND COUNCIL Steps taken to sell off an old motor vehicle registry in Wagga Wagga did not amount to use of the land, so the site was open to claim by the Aboriginal Land Council, the High Court of Australia held today. On 23 May 2005, the Land Council, on behalf of the Wagga Wagga Local Aboriginal Land Council made a claim under the NSW Aboriginal Land Rights Act to the 815 square metre allotment in the Wagga business district. A derelict two-storey brick building stood on the site. It was used as a motor registry from 1958 to 1985 and afterwards has been used to store old office furniture. After a plan to turn the building into a laboratory was abandoned in 2004, the State government decided to sell the site. Before the land claim was made, a real estate agent was appointed, an identification survey of the land was made, the Register-General issued a certificate of title, reservation of the land for a “government supply department office and workshop” was revoked, and an auction date of 8 July 2005 was fixed. The Minister for Lands refused the claim, concluding that the land was not claimable Crown land because it was lawfully used and occupied by the Department of Lands in preparing it for sale. The Land Rights Act’s definition of “claimable Crown lands” was limited to lands that were “not lawfully used or occupied”. The Land Council appealed to the NSW Land and Environment Court against the refusal of the claim. Justice Peter Biscoe dismissed the appeal and held that the decision to sell the land and the steps taken to do so were an actual use of the land. The Land Council appealed to the Court of Appeal which allowed the appeal, held that the land was not being used when the claim was made, declared that the land was claimable Crown land, and ordered the Minister to transfer the land to the Wagga Land Council. The Minister appealed to the High Court. The Court unanimously dismissed the appeal. It held that sale of the land would amount to exploitation of the land as an asset but it did not follow that exploitation by sale amounted to use of the land. The steps taken to bring about the sale did not amount to lawful use. Nothing was being done on the land when the claim was made and nothing had been done for a considerable time before then. Visits by surveyors and the real estate agent did not amount to a use of the land for the purposes of the Land Rights Act and everything else that was being done towards selling the land occurred elsewhere.