Authorities back off newspaper ban for Crow Eating prisoners … Madam Cash stars in ABA divine comedy … Court orders law shop to pay the money back … Vic’s new silks required to keep their hands to themselves … Job swap in Phillip Street … Theodora reports 

A constitutional crisis in the South Australian prison system has been averted at the eleventh hour. 

Chief Screw David Brown had banned distribution of Just Us, a newspaper published by Justice Action, an organisation that supports the rights and welfare of prisoners. 

The four-page edition of the paper deals with the federal election and prisoner voting – outlining the policies of various political parties.

About 40,000 copies of the newspaper have been distributed to prisoners in other states and territories. 

Supported by the Grata Fund, Allens with Adelaide constitutional guru Damian O’Leary SC, were on the case for Justice Action with an implied freedom submission and precedent drawn from the High Court ‘s decision in Roach v Electoral Commissioner. 

Jail keeper Brown doesn’t like the newspaper, claiming it was “facilitating relationships between prisoners and persons who are not prisoners”.  

“In my opinion, the document contains provocative and inflammatory material that may inflame or incite unrest among prisoners or otherwise inspire conflict …” 

His letter to Allens is here. 

On Thursday evening (May 12) before the case was due to commence in court, SA Correctional Services relented and said that a redacted version of the newspaper will be allowed into the prison libraries. 

The trouble is a lot of prisoners don’t go into the libraries, particularly maximum security prisoners. 

The Corrections people wanted to distribute one paper per ten prisoners but the red line for Justice Action was one issue of the paper per prisoner. 

A seven-day adjournment allows Justice Action to bring it back to court if the paper doesn’t get into the hands of the porridge eaters before postal votes are sent. 

Phrases such as “Jailing is Failing” have been chopped along with information about Covid, which the jailers say isn’t a problem in SA. 

Here’s the inflammatory” newspaper after redactions, and here are the applicant’s written submissions. 

The attorney general Madam Cash and her opposition counterpart Mark Dreyfus QC were wheeled out for the big ABA jamboree in Melbourne at the end of April. 

The idea was for an election policy debate between the contenders, but Cash squibbed it in the tradition of many from the Coalition frontline. 

Instead she sent in a 20 minute video of herself positioned in Perth between two Australian flags with a off-centre picture of the Queen behind her. 

Conference goers were confused, believing they were watching a segment from a Shaun Micallef satire. Needless to say, the spoof contained nothing of substance. 

It was left to Dreyfus to remind everyone that the last three Coalition attorneys have been the worst in history – rorting, stacking, subverting and generally doing their best to trash the rule off law. 

The NSW Ct of Appeal has been on sentry duty protecting a small client against the machinery of the fee collectors at western Sydney law shop, Brydens.

Mirjana Todorovska in 2015 gave Brydens the job of acting for her in a personal injury case. 

Consent judgment was entered in the Dizzo, awarding Mirjana $100,000, with the parties to pay their own costs. 

She was surprised to find that Brydens sent her $32,037 – the shop trousering $67,963 for itself for fees and disbursements. 

The plaintiff went back to court for a better payout. She was aggrieved that she had received in damages around 30 percent of the settlement while the law shop took 70 percent. 

She submitted that the statutory cap limited the costs, in a case where damages did not exceed $100,000, to the greater of either 20 percent of the amount recovered or $10,000. 

The primary judge, Alister Abadee, dismissed the claim, finding that the statutory cap had been excluded by a conditional costs agreement. 

On appeal, John Basten, Mark Leeming, and Richard White granted leave and set aside Abadee’s judgment – finding the law shop’s disclosures were inadequate. 

The large bundle of documents containing the information would confuse a lay client. The “notice” required by the Legal Profession Act, gave the misleading impression that the client had no choice but to enter the costs agreement. 

The appeal judges thought that neither the proposed costs agreement nor the conditional costs agreement sent to Ms Todorovska clearly explained that the statutory cap would be excluded. They added that the information did not indicate she had a meaningful right to negotiate the agreement.

The court said the statutory purpose of the disclosure regime was to make sure clients could make an informed choice between their rights under the statutory cap and under a proposed agreement. 

This was to “ensure that the cost to the parties was proportionate to the importance and complexity of the dispute”. 

Brydens unsuccessfully argued that leave should not be given because the money in contention was small, and that the applicable parts of the Legal Profession Act and regulations have now been repealed.  

Basten said: 

“There is an unsatisfactory disproportion between the benefit obtained by the injured party (some $23,000) and the proportion received by the lawyers (being almost three times that amount).” 

Such a result suggests that the attempt to limit litigation involving small claims, where the bulk of any recovery goes to lawyers, may be subverted if lawyers are able to obtain full recovery of their costs with [inadequate] disclosures.” 

The court ordered Brydens to pay the customer another $26,200 plus interest, plus costs. 

Todorovska v Brydens Lawyers Pty Ltd 

There are concerns at Vic’s Bar ‘n’ Grill that a new rule may slow the production of fresh silk. 

Applications for senior counsel close next Friday, on election eve, but bar president Róisín Annersley reminds contenders that “it is a requirement that all applicants complete a Sexual Harassment Awareness training course prescribed by Chief Justice Anne Ferguson”.  

The president explains that the bar will have to conduct this awareness course “prior to the announcement of the silks for 2022, and I anticipate prior to October 31, 2022”. 

“The bar will devise a mechanism by which applicants for silk will be able to inform the court that they have completed the course.” 

In the meantime, what’s to be done with any of the existing silks who would have flunked the course? 

Serendipitously there has been a swap of media advisers at the NSW Law Society and the office of the NSW attorney general. 

Damien Smith had skilfully massaged the media for AG Mark Speakman SC for five years. In March he notified the hacks of his impending departure, saying that working with Speakman had been “fabulous”.

Within a short interval he popped up as the NSW Law Society’s Director of Media and Public Relations, the very job that shortly before Sue Finn had left to take up Damien’s spot with AG Speakman.