Conway v Critchley
[2012] NSWSC 1405
At a glance
Source factsCourt
Supreme Court of NSW
Decision date
2012-11-14
Before
Pembroke J, McLelland J
Catchwords
- (2002) 209 CLR 95 South Australia v The Commonwealth [1962] HCA 10
Source
Original judgment source is linked above.
Catchwords
Judgment (13 paragraphs)
Introduction 1This is the determination of two separate questions, both of which are primarily questions of fact. The first concerns whether an agreement was made concerning the equal shareholding in the second and third defendants, as alleged by the plaintiff. The second concerns the existence of certain wine storage tanks and the plaintiff's entitlement to ownership and possession of them. 2In the case of both issues, I have not been assisted by the evidence of the plaintiff. I am afraid to say that he was an unconvincing and unsatisfactory witness. His evidence exhibited all those features of which McLelland J warned in Watson v Foxman (1995) 49 NSWLR 315 at 319: [H]uman memory of what was said in a conversation is fallible for a variety of reasons, and ordinarily the degree of fallibility increases with the passage of time, particularly where disputes or litigation intervene, and the processes of memory are overlaid, often subconsciously, by perceptions or self interest as well as conscious consideration of what should have been said or could have been said. All too often what is actually remembered is little more than an impression from which plausible details are then, again often subconsciously, constructed. All this is a matter of ordinary human experience. 3In addition, not only was the plaintiff compelled during his cross-examination to concede many inaccuracies in documents which he had prepared and affidavits which he had sworn, but I am satisfied that in relation to certain events to which I will return, he appears to have behaved dishonestly with the intention of obtaining a financial benefit. Except where his evidence was against interest, I have not felt able to place any reliance on it. In arriving at my conclusion as to whether the plaintiff's case has been proved on the balance of probabilities, I found the contemporaneous documents, the sequence of events and the objective probabilities more reliable.