Judge’s inability to complete the work as “quickly as I would have liked” … Latest in a string of slowcoach judgments … Supreme Court delays … Boilerplate explanations … Memory remains as fresh as a daisy … Groper reports 

This one concerned a share purchase agreement that fell over after financial assistance from the defendants was not provided. 

As a consequence the plaintiff claims to have suffered loss and damage of between $5 million and $6 million. 

Justice Hill heard the case in July and August 2020 and just before Christmas 2022 it landed – an interval of two years and four months. 

The lawyer for the plaintiff was Martin Bennett, who previously employed Hill as a solicitor and later she became a partner in Bennett’s law shop. 

In her judgment Hill didn’t mention her former connection with the plaintiff’s lawyer. Even so, the lawyers for Leaman couldn’t be all that happy, because she only awarded nominal damages of $100. 

She was more generous in Lloyd Rayney’s most recent defamation foray, where she awarded damages of $350,000 plus interest of $88,400. 

The defendant Mark Reynolds is a former forensic crime scene investigator who told a seminar that there is “no need for a cold case review” into the death of Mrs Corryn Rayney, because “the offender was identified”. The trial took place in July 2020 with judgment delivered two years and three months later on October 31, 2022. 

Reynolds claims to be penniless. 

Bennett was Rayney’s lawyer but again the judge failed to mention in court that she had worked for Bennett for 12-and-a-half years. 

Hill dismissed Reynold’s recusal application, saying the failure to disclose her “prior working relationship was of no legal consequence”. 

During her Supreme Court welcome speech, 12 months before the Rayney hearing, she mentioned Bennett eight times. 

Justice Hill heard Nguyễn v Nguyễn Huynh (WA) Pty Ltd in February 2020 – a dispute over a family run IPA business. She delivered judgment more than two years and three months later, in December 2022. 

There was an earlier instance of tardy delivery not long after Hill went to the Supreme Court in June 2019. She published Marchese v Marchese in November 2021, having heard it two years earlier in November 2019. 

The delivery of her judgments in Leaman, Nguyễn, Rayney and Marchese were all subject to delays of up to two years and more and in each she trotted out a boilerplate explanation that the slowness didn’t impair her ability to “properly access the parties’ cases and evidence”.