Jeff Sher interview 18 November 2009

I'll tell you a funny story about Neil. He used to look behind things a lot more than I did, and I was his junior once, he took silk a year ahead of me and one day I was briefed as his junior (which I thought was pretty interesting because I was a very senior junior at the time). Anyway, so I went over to see Neil to confer about the case. I opened the door and I could barely see Neil because the room was full of smoke and the first thing he said to me was, "Would you like a beer?" So after we got the pleasantries over, he said to me, "right, the first thing we're going to do, Jeff, is amend the defence". I said "why are we going to do that - there's nothing wrong with it?" "Yeah, I know that," he said, "but the solicitor drew it and we can't have solicitors drawing defences". So Neil wanted to amend the defence.

I heard once that the worst thing you could say perhaps to a solicitor who's put a brief together is that it looks like a piece of journalism.

Yeah well, maybe.

Was it on that level that he was describing it?

Oh well, he just liked teasing people, including his opponents. Actually I'll repeat this story about Neil because he's repeated it himself. He was appearing in the Dog's case in the High Court. That's the one about government-owned church schools and he was cross-examining a Mother Superior, I think. At one stage in her evidence, he was asking her what she'd been doing, and she said "I've been praying" and Neil, who admitted later that this was one question too many, said "well, what have you been praying for, Mother Superior?" She said, "I've been praying for you, Mr McPhee". So that bought the house down of course.

He was one of your most colourful and interesting opponents. What about other people that you appeared against who really gave you a run for your money?

Oh, there were a lot of them actually. I mean Jack Hedigan, Glen Waldron, Des Whelan. I was led by Des Whelan in a case and I was just on the verge of taking silk and Des liked to do everything himself and the case went, I think, for five and a half weeks and Des didn't let me ask a single question of any witness or lead a witness or do anything until he had to leave and go to Tasmania, which is when he left me in charge. Oh, a lot of good advocates. I might have needed a little more notice than you've given me to answer this question, but I mean the standards at the Victorian Bar I thought were terrific. There were a lot of competent good advocates around. A guy that I appeared a lot against who never took silk was a fellow called Fred Tinney. Fred was terrific, he was always doing plaintiffs' work and I was doing a lot of defendants' work. He was a good advocate, very passionate. I can remember once in a case being conducted right at the end of the year and he was acting for an old-age pensioner who'd managed to walk against a light into the side of a turning vehicle. It was a hopeless case, and Fred started his address to the jury by saying "Well the fact that the plaintiff is a pensioner and it's ten days till Christmas is irrelevant to any of the issues in this case". The jury agreed with him, they found for the defendant.

Conducted for the Victorian Bar oral history project by Juliette Brodsky, and filmed by Stewart Carter on 18 November 2009