SEK Hulme interview 17 November 2006

Speaking of Petty Sessions, did you yourself appear very often at the old Magistrates' Court in Russell Street?

No. When I think of it now, almost my first case was down there - that's something that's just come back to me - prosecuting a merchant seaman for desertion, with the merchant seaman pleading guilty. So it wasn't a very difficult case. It was given to me as a case where, when I had just started at the Bar, that it would be difficult even for me to muck up when the man is standing there saying, "I'm guilty." The reason for it was that if you deserted and were proved to have deserted certain obligations arose on the shipping company to take you back to your own country and to get you out of Australia and take you home. The system required that he be convicted, so someone would be given a guinea or two guineas to go down to the City Court and get him convicted and hand back a sheet saying "Convicted", which went without any difficulty.

Other than that, I hardly appeared in Petty Sessions in my early years having, as I said earlier, kind of slipped into the equity work in the Miscellaneous Causes List. I did in later years go back when the - this would be before the Commonwealth Commission of Corporate Affairs, so it was under the State system of company government. I forget what they were called, but whatever they were called, they wanted to put Joe in prison...

You're alluding to Joe Guss?

Joe Guss, I'm sorry, yes. He was a solicitor, who had company interests and it was in relation to his companies. The authorities were saying that a false balance sheet had been prepared and money had been - people had been allowed to invest money and it was fraudulent, etcetera. They brought in a silk called Bob Brooking, who was very much out to get Guss. He was speaking in terms of six to eight years and they had him on about seven charges, a couple of which were undoubtedly provable. The document had not been signed properly or something like that. There's very little one can do about that. At the end of the day down there on these charges, we won about three of them down there, probably lost two, and the two hopeless ones, but they were only, on any view, technical. On the substantial one, the deliberately fraudulent, etcetera, we'd done well. It so happened I knew the copper from the Fraud Squad who was giving evidence and he said later, "Gee, it just felt like I was giving evidence for you", which in a sense he was.

Joe was funny. Joe wasn't trying to steal money. He just didn't draw a distinction between his money and anyone else's. Now this scheme that he was trying to put up, he put a lot of his own money in and he lost that, just like the other people lost their money and I was cross-examining the police to the effect, that's not the fraudster. Normally the man doesn't put his own money in. He puts your money in, but not his own. The magistrate accepted this, so we won about three and those we lost, we took one on appeal to General Sessions, where Stephen Charles appeared for the Crown. We won that.

Another went to Ben Dunn on an order to review, heard in my favourite Miscellaneous Causes List. He kept on convicting. We took that to the High Court, where it became an important case about liabilities in relation to balance sheets. Guss v Veenhuizen (No.1) (1976) 136CLR 34. We won there. So of those that mattered, we'd won five out of seven and we'd lost on the two technical hopeless ones. So instead of going to gaol for six or eight years, Joe got fined, I think, $300.

What happened to him after that?

Joe's still around. He stayed on in the profession. We had a certain amount of trouble with the costs in the High Court because he had briefed me himself in this and it turned out he wasn't on the High Court list. Life was dangerous, but anyway I think he was allowed to get himself put on the list and enforce the order for costs. About a year later I was in the middle of suing Joe, the only time I've ever sued for my fees because I knew I wasn't going to get paid by Joe until I did. I never have sued anybody for fees, except Joe. And so I said to John or Percy or whoever it was, "Go ahead" and we got the solicitors and we took out an Order 14 summons and I swear there's no defence for this action and I should get instant judgment and Joe saw me down there. He said, "SEK, I've just discovered you haven't been paid. Oh I am so..." - I mean, one of the things Joe knew, was whether he'd paid a bill or not, but he had more front than - and I liked Joe, but undoubtedly he was a scallywag.

I appeared for him in front of Menhennitt at one point. I forget what that was about, but tax was, I think, involved in it. When Menhennitt came to give judgment, instead of handing it down - it was a mammoth judgment - he spent the entire day reading these things, spitting it out, "The next thing Mr Guss did..." and Joe's sitting there in the front, just looking at him, smiling quietly and driving Menhennitt into a frenzy. It was a fairly easy thing to drive Menhennitt into a frenzy. Joe had more front than Myers, as they used to say.

Conducted for the Bar Oral History project by Juliette Brodsky in Owen Dixon Chambers West and filmed by Rocco Fasano