What did former Justice Dyson Heydon mean by &quot;put that respectfully&quot;? I'm having difficulty understanding this exchange between Robert Newlinds SC, the barrister representing the Australian Council of Trade Unions, and Dyson Heydon KC, the Commissioner of the Royal Commission into Trade Union Governance and Corruption, on 17 August 2015 (transcript, video): THE COMMISSIONER: From whom do you get your instructions, Mr Newlinds, if you don't mind telling me that? MR NEWLINDS: Mr Gordon. THE COMMISSIONER: Yes, but from whom do the lay instructions come? MR NEWLINDS: They pass through a Mr Oliver but I understand they come from the constituent entity. THE COMMISSIONER: Where is Mr Oliver? MR NEWLINDS: He's here somewhere. THE COMMISSIONER: Is he in the hearing room? MR NEWLINDS: I believe so. THE COMMISSIONER: Yes. That seems to remove one obstacle to getting instructions. MR NEWLINDS: No, it doesn't. THE COMMISSIONER: You put that, of course, respectfully. MR NEWLINDS: I do. Is Heydon accusing Newlinds of being disrespectful? THE COMMISSIONER: I don't quite understand that point. If, for example, Mr Oliver had just gone into hospital and was under a general anaesthetic, then of course your position would be impeccable. MR NEWLINDS: May I explain the point? THE COMMISSIONER: Can I just conclude by saying this: that if Mr Oliver is here, it is possible to get instructions from him. If he has difficulties in getting instructions from others, this is just a possible point of view I am putting to you, he should have come armed with them this morning to pass on to you. MR NEWLINDS: You say that. THE COMMISSIONER: I do say that. That is a possible view, is it not? MR NEWLINDS: I don't accept that's a reasonable view. I looked up the legal meaning of &quot;instructions,&quot; which is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as: 5. In plural. Law. Information or directions regarding a case, as given by a client to a solicitor or a solicitor to a barrister. Also: authorization of a solicitor or barrister to conduct a case on a person's behalf. However, I also don't understand the point. What is Newlinds saying?
“You put that, of course, respectfully?” You bet your ass Heydon is telling Newlands off. Knock down drag out fights in a courtroom are more subtle than in a barroom and the judge always wins. First we have the trivial issue that the barrister interrupted the commissioner while he was speaking! This is extreemly disrespectful and Heydon was pointing that out by calmly but sarcastically suggesting that the interruption should have started with “With respect ..,”. The clear implication that the interruption should not have happened at all. It doesn’t matter if you disagree with what the court is saying, you don’t interrupt, you wait for your opportunity to respond. You will be given it. That’s respect. More germanely, the barrister is in a tricky position. I don’t know what came before the video starts but it was clearly one Newlands did not expect but that Heydon thought was foreseeable. Newlands is trying to hide behind “I haven’t been instructed on that” but is having trouble because the client (or at least, the client’s representative) is in the room and can instruct him right now. Not being prepared in court is also disrespectful. At a rough guess, just the people you see in the video are costing somebody north of $10,000 per hour. You don’t show up for the big game, tell the coach you can’t play because you forgot your boots but that it’s not your fault. Particularly when the person standing behind you is holding your boots.
If the question is: "Did she call you and talk about two business contracts? " then this is not hearsay. We have a witness, standing in court, saying that exactly these things happened - that she called, and that she talked about those deals. If the question is: "Did the company sign two business deals that day? " then it is hearsay. We know that she said two deals were signed, because we have a witness for that, but that doesn't mean she said the truth. She could have lied about that. We don't have a witness standing in court saying that the deals were signed. We have a witness in court saying that he heard someone say the deals were signed. In a libel case where Jim sues Joe for libel, a witness says "Joe told me that Jim is a lying thief". That's absolutely not hearsay in a libel case about Joe spreading false rumours. The exact same statement by the exact same witness would be hearsay if someone tried to convict Jim for theft.
TL;DNR: At the time of the Founding, bribery covered both giving and taking a bribe. Two definitions of bribery from the Founding Era. It is often hard to say exactly what a word meant &quot;in the English language as it existed at the time of the framers.&quot; However, in this case, it's not hard. It’s easy! There are plenty of examples of people defining bribery to include both giving and receiving. I’ve picked two. The first is Lord Mansfield, one of the most distinguished English judges of the 18th century. In 1769, he defined bribery in the case of Rex v. Vaughan, which involved an attempt to bribe a privy councilor. Mansfield’s definition was widely quoted by American judges and treatise writers well into the 20th Century: Wherever it is a crime to take, it is a crime to give. They are reciprocal. And in many cases...the attempt is a crime. The second definition comes Noah Webster. He defined bribery in 1828, in the first edition of his American Dictionary of the English Language. Bribery: The act or practice of giving or taking rewards for corrupt practices; the act of paying or receiving a reward for a false judgment, or testimony, or for the performance of that which is known to be illegal, or unjust. It is applied both to him who gives, and to him who receives the compensation… A Bonus: James Madison on the language of the Constitution James Madison was one of the architects of the Constitution. He played a major role in drafting the Constitution and the Bill of Right, and in the campaigns to get them ratified. It is not clear that he thought the meaning of the words at the Founding would be all that useful in figuring out what the Constitution means. In Federalist 37, he discussed the role of language in deciding what the Constitution meant. He was writing to answer critics who claimed the text of the Constitution was too unclear and vague. Here is what he said: All new laws, though penned with the greatest technical skill, and passed on the fullest and most mature deliberation, are considered as more or less obscure and equivocal, until their meaning be liquidated and ascertained by a series of particular discussions and adjudications. Madison went on to say that human language is so deeply flawed that when God uses it, even His messages are “rendered dim and doubtful by the cloudy medium through which it is communicated.” Although Madison's prose can be hard to follow, Federalist # 37 is worth a look.
Point three should include "to the best of my knowledge and belief", or be modified to state that none of those "house or the adjacent shop" have informed the affiant of any such delivery, or delivered any such package to the affiant. It might add that the affiant had questioned such persons and they denied receiving such a delivery. The point here, of course, is to prove that the package was never properly delivered, no doubt in support of a claim on the delivery service. The ordinary assumption is that if a person in the "house or the adjacent shop" had accepted a package, it would normally have been given to the addressee at an early opportunity.
It is. Part 2 Chapter 1 Section 8 specifically says &quot;People who are not married or civil partners do not have this characteristic.&quot; In practical terms, a claim for unlawful dismissal would not have to rely on this Act or this Characteristic. Many company handbooks refer to avoiding discrimination on &quot;marital status&quot;, so the claim could be made that the company had acted against policy. Not as strong as national law, but likely to succeed in absence of other factors. Single people who were expected to cover shifts that people with a family consistently avoided could argue constructive dismissal on &quot;making unreasonable changes to working patterns or place of work without agreement&quot; grounds. And cases of sexual harassment are as likely to refer to Sections 11 or 12 of the Act as to Section 8. There appears to be some interest in this - north of the border if not in England and Wales - and perhaps less jurisdictionally in Bella De Paulo's article for Psychology Today, which concludes &quot;All serious forms of prejudice and discrimination go through a similar process of going unrecognized, then getting dismissed and belittled once people start pointing them out, and in the best cases, eventually getting taken seriously. Ruth Bader Ginsburg noted that when she was first appointed to the Supreme Court, the other judges did not think gender discrimination existed. ...&quot;
In some jurisdictions it's against the code of ethics. For example, in the united-states, Model Rule of Professional Conduct 5.4(b) says: A lawyer shall not form a partnership with a nonlawyer if any of the activities of the partnership consist of the practice of law. The idea has to do with independence: Lawyers are officers of the court and—as members of a regulated profession—can be bound to professional codes. Talented leader/organizer/visionaries aren't bound in any such way. The comment to the Rule explains, "Where someone other than the client pays the lawyer's fee or salary, or recommends employment of the lawyer, that arrangement does not modify the lawyer's obligation to the client." This can create a conflict, and states resolve it by regulating the partnership's composition. Other jurisdictions go even further and it’s prohibited in law.
To win a negligence claim, the plaintiff needs to prove that the defendant: had a duty to the plaintiff, breached that duty by failing to conform to the required standard of conduct (generally the standard of a reasonable person), the plaintiff must have suffered actual harm, the negligent conduct was, in law, the cause of that harm, and that harm was foreseeable. If they fail to prove any one of the limbs, the claim fails entirely. The eggshell skull principle which is what you are referring to goes to the amount of damage (and damages) that happens: not to if there is negligence in the first place. The foundation case in the modern law of negligence is Donoghue v Stevenson: the facts involved Mrs Donoghue drinking a bottle of ginger beer in a café in Paisley, Renfrewshire. A dead snail was in the bottle. She fell ill, and she sued the ginger beer manufacturer, Mr Stevenson. The House of Lords held that the manufacturer owed a duty of care to her, which was breached, because it was reasonably foreseeable that failure to ensure the product's safety would lead to harm of consumers. Lord Atkin define neighbour (people to whom a duty is owed) as "persons who are so closely and directly affected by my act that I ought reasonably to have them in contemplation as being so affected when I am directing my mind to the acts or omissions that are called in question." The determination of the existence of a duty is a matter of law, not facts, therefore the decision rests with the judge not the jury. However, the law needs to consider the particular facts of the relationship including the particular risk of injury which eventuated, the defendant's relationship to that risk and the nature of the damage suffered although no one factor is itself sufficient. Of relevance to your hypothetical plaintiff is Bolton v Stone, the plaintiff was hit by a cricket ball which had been hit out of the ground; the defendants were members of the club committee. The judges held that as it was not reasonably foreseeable that a cricket ball would be hit so far, the club was not negligent. In the words of Lord Normand, "It is not the law that precautions must be taken against every peril that can be foreseen by the timorous." In essence, Stone being hit by a cricket ball was, in your words, an accident even though it was caused by the cricket club. It is not reasonably foreseeable that brushing against a stranger in, say, a corridor would cause them harm. Therefore the act is not negligent even though, for this particular person, harm can be caused. In the absence of negligence, the eggshell skull principle is moot. However, in circumstances where the defendant has knowledge of the plaintiff's condition, brushing against them may be negligent depending on all the surrounding circumstances.
For the same reason you can’t ask the parties to a contract what they meant Legislation, once enacted, stands on its own independent of the people who drafted it, introduced it to Parliament and voted for or against it. These are not the same people in any event and since the legislation might have been passed anywhere between the 13th and 21st centuries, a lot of them will be dead. There’s a fundamental issue of fairness here. The people who are obliged to comply with the law (you and I) can’t ask the politicians so neither can the judges who have to decide if we did. Further, the judiciary cannot interact with the executive or the legislature in this way without violating the principle of separation of powers. Imagine you are charged with a crime and your guilt or innocence turns on the interpretation of the statute. Do you really want politicians who are looking at how the case plays out on Twitter telling the judge which interpretation to use i.e. effectively telling them whether you are guilty or not?