Mood:
quizzicalTopic: legal
We write as a lawyer in NSW and community media practitioner. We are bound by the court order not to discuss the facts of the case.
The Sydney Daily Telegraph are the right wing screamers usually when it comes to the administration of the law and beat up on the independence of both the judiciary and the profession.
The barrister in question today Evers gave pro bono advice to this writer as legal tutor for a disabled claimant under the Family Provision Act last year 2007. (The matter was referred on to a practitioner who is a councillor on the Law Society itself, because Evers was too busy with other case work.)
Evers was recommended to us by the principal lawyer of the Intellectual Disability Rights Centre as first choice for helping my friend of 10 years "Mary" (not her real name) with a chronic but harmless illness.
By the look of Evers office in Martin Place she has done pro bono and public interest work for the mentally disabled or afflicted her whole life. This has to count for something, maybe even alot.
We make no comment on the facts of the story in the Telegraph as pictured above except to note the repudiation of the factual characterisation by Evers herself. We understand that the complaint to the Legal Services Commissioner may not be the DPP itself. If true it may be one error by the Daily Telegraph already.
Significantly the LSC is under the jurisdiction of the NSW Attorney General's office but independent of the Minister John Hatzistergos MP (ALP) who does not have "power of direction over them", according to Ms Kerry Henderson Acting Assistant Legal Servicers Commissioner.
We are advised that under Section 723 of the Legal Profession Act 2004 it can be an offence to publish the name of the identity of the complainant to the LSC except in certain limited circumstances (such as consent by the complainant? - we would have to check all of this in the section itself).
Apparently the story has run on 2GB and 2WS already in some form or other.
The complaint will take it's course as it should. Paramount is the welfare of the child and the search for justice.
Meanwhile we note:
1. the potential for Evers as cannon fodder between the power frictions and appeasement relations between DPP Cowdery and AG NSW Hatzistergos could well be in play
2. in the same edition of the Daily Telegraph that newspaper's grip on public morality is again on display - 3 and 1/4 pages of grog adverts. Which leads to any number of sexual assualts and criminal violence. That's sad.
3. We wonder what affect this front page blowtorch will have on a big murder trial Evers is defending in court today? Is it a strategic attack from an earlier case? Indeed is it an interference in the administration of justice by coincidence or intention in a defence lawyer doing their work?
There is alot more to come out on the factual matrix regarding this complaint apparently to the Legal Services Commissioner, not reflected in the Daily Telegraph story (how unsurprising is that), and we say that with a compelling source.
.............
Refer to a a more recent story next day here on SAM describing how peers in the Big Media dealt with the Sydney Daily Telegraph 'leadership' above. It's not very flattering.
