All entries on Feminist Legal Clinic’s News Digest Blog are extracts from news articles and other publications, with the source available at the link at the bottom. The content is not originally generated by Feminist Legal Clinic and does not necessarily reflect our views.
A principal has been fined, publicly reprimanded and barred from obtaining a practising certificate for 12 months for professional misconduct in a disciplinary first in Queensland.
The principal and legal practitioner director was charged with failing to exercise ‘appropriate forensic judgment called for’ by filing an affidavit on behalf of a client that included explicit and sensitive material.
The practitioner was acting for the respondent to an application for a protection order under the Domestic and Family Violence Protection Act 2012 (Qld). In preparing an affidavit on behalf of his client he attached photographs depicting the applicant naked.
In its decision the Tribunal accepted that the placing of the material before the court was a legitimate forensic purpose under Rule 17.1 of the Australian Solicitors Conduct Rules, however, the method adopted for the provision of the evidence was at issue.
“All that was required was to inform the court that there would be a necessity to tender sensitive material and to seek directions how best to do so,” the Tribunal said in its decision.
“The filing of the affidavit, even in the relatively closed environment of the court involved in such applications, necessarily required publication to the applicant seeking a protection order, and others required by their duties to deal with the affidavit. Given the principal objects of the DFVP Act include the safety, protection and well-being of those who fear or experience domestic violence and to minimise disruption to their lives the very act of filing the explicit images within the affidavit potentially involved an act of domestic violence itself. Hence the need for forensic judgment in this difficult area.”1