Juliette Brodsky
Yes. And following that, you all commenced practising at the Bar at the beginning of the 1960s. I believe, John Batt, that the Bar was less specialised in those days. All of you were assigned to what was known as equity, which largely meant wills and trusts?
Bill Ormiston
Not like that, no.
John Batt
Not assigned.
Bill Ormiston
I was encouraged by my Master, who was Dick Griffith, to do everything and I did everything and I brought my first notebooks along and the variety of odd cases I did was testimony to that. I used to go out to Courts of Petty Sessions and I prosecuted in Courts of General Sessions and …
Clive Tadgell
Yes, you did more prosecuting than any of us I think.
Bill Ormiston
Well, John Batt did quite a lot over a longer period. I gave up because I thought I was no good in front of juries, after about 12 months of these sorts of weekly prosecuting briefs.
Juliette Brodsky
Why did you think you were no good in front of juries?
Bill Ormiston
I lost all the cases bar two, I think. (Laughter). And one which I lost was when a fellow was charged with stealing armoured cars from Puckapunyal Army Camp. It was very difficult to lose that case because they were all dug up from his property.
Clive Tadgell
But Bill, you weren’t supposed to win; you were there for the purposes of setting it all out and letting the jury decide.
Bill Ormiston
No, but I thought that I had no persuasive talents and I was against some quite good criminal barristers, especially in the motor car “driving under the influence” cases.
JD Phillips
When I started in 1961 just after the others, I remember quite well the amount of criminal work we were offered as raw juniors because I said to my clerk I didn’t want to do it, so I ended up doing all the bankruptcy cases. It was quite a deliberate choice on my part to prefer bankruptcy because you had no-one doing bankruptcy and you had all these other juniors doing the criminal prosecutions. So, it was as broad as that, but you did everything virtually unless you wrote a line under some of it.
Juliette Brodsky
That made for a better grounding, didn’t it, in your view, as far as your training was concerned?
JD Phillips
Yes, I think it did.
Bill Ormiston
I think it was much better, at least when I got on the Bench, because I’d seen a little bit of everything, not at the highest levels, but I’d seen a little bit of everything.
JD Phillips
Divorce was another section which you did as a raw junior too.
Bill Ormiston
I did two. I remember one on circuit, which put me off circuit life forever.
JD Phillips
I remember I was so embarrassed about the affidavit, about the sexual lives of these two protagonists that I left gaps in it when I dictated it to the secretary so I could write in these words afterwards. (Laughter)
Juliette Brodsky
Would you care to recall any of them now?
JD Phillips
No, I don’t. I was quite shy about it. (Laughs)
John Batt
Some others of us did bankruptcy and it used to be quite a special way of doing things before Sir Thomas Clyne, Sammy Clyne – you had to read all the papers and he’d been through them and he knew the traps –
Clive Tadgell
And he used to go “mumble mumble”. One said, “I beg Your Honour’s pardon?” and he said, “mumble mumble”. It was just purgatory really.
James Merralls
I was in a case once before Sammy Clyne and he mumbled to a witness, and the witness looked at him and said, “I beg your pardon?” And he said it again. The witness looked at counsel, received no help there and he said it again. The witness looked at the ceiling, looked around the room and he said, “I beg yours, Your Honour” and his Honour said, “I said, keep your voice up, will you, the shorthand writer is having trouble taking you down”. (Laughter)
Bill Ormiston
I do remember amongst ourselves that we had this sort of competition about who could read these papers faster than anybody else and John Phillips always won. I can’t remember whether he got it down to 8 and half minutes or 7 minutes or something like that. In Sydney, they had so much business that Clyne didn’t insist on the papers being read, but in Melbourne there was rather less work so he insisted on the papers being read. The only other thing was - you had to know, otherwise you were in terrible trouble thereafter - you had to know what the rule was to excuse you if you had made an error or the papers were wrong in some way. And if you got that wrong the first time, he treated you with great suspicion thereafter. But fortunately, I think each of us had been told in advance so we knew the rule which would get us out of these problems, so we survived in the bankruptcy jurisdiction.
James Merralls
He (Clyne) was quite a good lawyer, but he was bored to sobs in the bankruptcy jurisdiction so he was like a cat playing with counsel who appeared before him. And if you were a newcomer, he would sort of turn you over as if you were a mouse and play with you with his paw.
Clive Tadgell
He soon retired, though, didn’t he, at a fairly advanced age, and the difference in his replacement …
JD Phillips
Charles Sweeney.
Clive Tadgell
It was Harry Gibbs, wasn’t it?
JD Phillips
Oh yes.
Clive Tadgell
Well, that was a very big difference, but then, there was a bigger difference still.
JD Phillips
Well I didn’t appear before Charles Sweeney, so I think Clyne must have been there a good 4, 5, 6 years.
Bill Ormiston
Yes, and by then he was replaced by Gibbs because he came there because he’d, as I understand it, originally been promised a position on a new federal court but it came to nothing. He’d committed himself to leaving the Queensland Supreme Court, of which he had been a very good member. And they had to find him a federal position and the only position they could find him was as judge in bankruptcy, but he was a marvellous judge in bankruptcy. He was so kind to those who were suffering and yet he was terribly fair but he wouldn’t just excuse them or let them off, though he was very kind to them. I was struck by him immediately and I think all of us were - he was such a good judge.
Clive Tadgell
Yes, he was throughout his career.
James Merralls
I thought he was a model judge at every level.
JD Phillips
Going back to Sammy Clyne, he was a classics scholar, Latin and Greek, and I infuriated him one day by pressing for an adjournment, and pressing on long past the point at which I should have ceased, and he finally said to me in some irritation, “I’ll adjourn to the Greek kalends” and stared at me and said, “Do you know what the Greek kalends is?” And I wasn’t going to say “Yes” when I didn’t, so I said “No, your Honour,” and he said “Well, you can look it up!” So I did, and as you know, it was the equivalent of “never”. (Laughter)
|
