Hendi v Commonwealth of Australia

The defendant's change of solicitors in October 2015

On 23 October 2015 the defendant transferred conduct of the matter to the Australian Government Solicitor (AGS) at which time Mr Kathner became the solicitor with conduct of the matters (which involved the plaintiffs and two children) on its behalf. Mr Kathner received 19 boxes of documents associated with the matter. It took him a considerable period to process and collate those documents. By about mid to late November 2015 he became aware that Dr Phillips had been retained to conduct medico-legal assessments of the plaintiffs and had forwarded a report. Mr Kathner considered that it was not in the defendant's interests to rely on the report, which was not served.
On 26 November 2015 the plaintiffs filed subpoenas against persons, who included Dr Parmegiani, Dr Roldan and Dr Phillips. The subpoenas were issued and made returnable before the Court at 9am on 14 December 2015. Dr Phillips, who presumably appreciated that his report and clinical notes were privileged, wrote to the defendant, by letter dated 10 December 2015 in the following terms: "We understand that the matters of Mr Hamed Hendi and Ms Nasrin Ghasemi (and Master Amir Hendi, Ms Asrin Hendi) are now in your hands as instructed by Sparke Helmore Lawyers. In the spirit of openness, I am letting you know that I have received subpoenas from Shine Lawyers for clinical materials for Ms Hamed Hendi and Ms Nasrin Ghasemi by 14 December 2015. I assume the usual process of responding will apply."
Mr Varley, a solicitor who was subject to Mr Kathner's supervision, appeared on behalf of the Commonwealth before this Court at 9am on 14 December 2015, being the return date of the subpoena. There was no appearance on behalf of the plaintiffs. Certain documents had been produced to the Court prior to the return date. Documents produced by Ms Angela Carroll from Cumberland Hospital had been put in a packet marked S7 and documents produced by Dr Parmegiani had been put in a packet marked S8. None of the Phillips documents had been produced by 9am on 14 December 2015. Mr Varley asked Senior Deputy Registrar Hedge to make orders granting the defendant first access to these documents. The Senior Deputy Registrar refused to make such orders in the absence of the plaintiffs and without their consent. Mr Varley contacted the plaintiffs' then solicitor, Ms Breda, who consented to the following orders, which were made by the Court: "1. The defendant have first access for 7 days to Packet S8 in matter 2014/68211 and Packet S7 in 2014/68216. 2. Thereafter general access to any non-privileged documents in any separate packet in each matter."
Ms Breda's file note of the conversation does not accord with the orders actually made in that she recorded: "Telephone attendance incoming on Matt- R/S [return of subpoena] I agree to Def [the defendant] first access 7 days for Drs Roldan, Parmegiani and Phillips (11.01 and 11.02)." The note indicated that the orders dealt with documents from Drs Roldan and Phillips as well as Parmegiani but the order only dealt with Dr Parmegiani's documents, no other documents having been produced by the return date of 14 December 2015.
On the morning of 15 December 2015, between 10am and midday, Mr Kathner attended the Court Registry to inspect the documents produced by Dr Parmegiani. He applied to uplift the subpoenaed documents pursuant to Practice Note SC Gen 3. He later returned the documents to the Court, which were divided into two packets, one in respect of which privilege was claimed, and one in respect of which no privilege was claimed.
Later that day, Mr Kathner wrote to the plaintiffs' solicitors in the following terms: "We have attended the registry this morning to commence our inspection of Dr Parmegiani's material and have become aware that Dr Phillips has also produced materials in response to your subpoena. It appears that Dr Roldan is yet to produce. We write now to seek your undertaking you will not seek to inspect any materials produced by Dr Phillips until Tuesday 22 December and the Defendant be afforded first access for 7 days to any materials that may subsequently be produced by Dr Roldan."
In his evidence on the motion, Mr Kathner explained that his wording in the first paragraph set out above was "inelegant" since although he knew from Dr Phillips' letter that he was proposing to produce documents, he did not know when they would be produced and knew, moreover, that they had not been produced by the time Mr Kathner had attended the Registry on the morning of 15 December 2015. He explained that he sought an undertaking as the documents were prima facie privileged and, on that basis, he was entitled to first right of inspection.
As no documents had been produced by Dr Phillips or Dr Roldan by the return date, Mr Kathner assumed that the plaintiffs' solicitors would act in accordance with what he considered to be usual practice and professional courtesy (which he himself followed and which he regarded as general practice within the profession) and obtain a further return date and advise Dr Phillips, Dr Roldan and himself of the new date. This did not occur. It was not suggested to Mr Kathner in cross-examination that the practice which he considered to be usual was unreasonable in any respect.
Later on 15 December 2015, this Court's Registry received documents produced by Dr Phillips in relation to Ms Ghasemi. On 17 December 2015 the Registry received documents produced by Dr Phillips in relation to Mr Hendi.
Mr Kathner did not receive any response to his letter of 15 December 2015. Mr Kathner did not attend the Court again or indicate that the defendant claimed privilege in respect of the Phillips documents.
After the conclusion of the motion and the making of orders I consulted the Court record, which indicates that on 17 December 2015 (the penultimate date of the 2015 Court term), the defendant requested a return date early in the 2016 Court term. The date of 8 February 2016 (the second Monday of the new term) was allocated. I include this matter for completeness, although it was not put to Mr Kathner in cross-examination.
On 22 December 2015 Mr Kathner caused to be filed, on behalf of the defendant, a total of eight cross-claims in respect of each of the four proceedings (by the plaintiffs and two children) against Serco Australia Pty Ltd (who administered the detention centres in which the plaintiffs were detained) and separate cross-claims against International Health and Medical Services Pty Ltd (who provided medical services to detainees). The cross-claims are lengthy pleadings which I accept would have required considerable care and attention by Mr Kathner, who was the solicitor required to verify them.
Mr Kathner was also occupied with a motion filed by related parties in the District Court seeking orders that the District Court transfer these proceedings to the District Court. The motions were accompanied by lengthy affidavits. Mr Kathner appreciated that the District Court did not have power to transfer proceedings in this Court and was endeavouring to work out the best way of dealing with this matter. He was also the solicitor on the record engaged in separate proceedings against the Commonwealth which were listed for hearing at the beginning of the 2016 term, in respect of which the plaintiffs' solicitors had ceased to act.
On the further return date of 8 February 2016, an order for general access was made, which included the Phillips documents. There is no record of a claim for privilege having been made on that day and no record of who, if anyone, appeared on that day. I include this matter for completeness, although it was not revealed in the evidence before me on the motion and it was not put to Mr Kathner in cross-examination.
On 6 April 2016 the plaintiffs' solicitors applied for leave to uplift the subpoenaed documents for copying. On 7 or 8 April 2016 they sent an agent to the Court to copy the documents produced on subpoena. The plaintiffs' copying agents obtained access to the Phillips documents (to which they were entitled having regard to the order for access which was made on 8 February 2016 and the lack of any claim for privilege having been made over the documents), which were copied, along with the other documents produced on subpoena to other third parties.
On 6 May 2016 Mr Kathner resigned from AGS and, accordingly, ceased to be the solicitor with conduct of the matter. Amanda Taylor assumed conduct of the matter on behalf of the defendant on about 12 May 2016.
By letter dated 18 May 2016, the plaintiffs' solicitor served the report of Dr Phillips on AGS and indicated that they would rely on it in the plaintiffs' case against the defendant. The letter and report were received by AGS Sydney on 23 May 2016 (where Mr Kathner had been based). AGS Sydney sent it on to AGS Canberra (where Ms Taylor was based) where it was received on 24 May 2016. Ms Taylor first became aware that Dr Phillips had prepared a report when she read the letter from the plaintiffs' solicitors and the attached report.
After consulting with senior and junior counsel for the defendant, Ms Taylor wrote to the plaintiffs' solicitors by letter dated 27 May 2016. By that date, she had not had the opportunity to speak with Mr Kathner and indeed did not speak to him about the matter until recently. Her letter was in the following terms: "We refer to your recent letters both dated 18 May 2016, received in the AGS office in Sydney on 23 May 2016, and provided to me on 24 May 2016, purporting to serve the Commonwealth with reports of Dr Jonathon Phillips both dated 7 October 2015 for Hamed Hendi and Nasrin Ghasemi and note the following:- As you are aware, Dr Phillips was an expert retained by the Defendant in these proceedings to provide an expert medico legal report, in relation to your clients. On 15 December 2015, Mr Kathner from our office wrote to you advising that at that time, Dr Parmegiani was the only doctor subpoenaed to have produced material, but that Mr Kathner had become aware that Dr Phillips had also recently produced materials in response to your Subpoena. He sought your undertaking not to inspect any materials produced by Dr Phillips, until Tuesday, 22 December 2016 [sic] and the Defendant be afforded first access to that material. You failed to respond to that letter. Given the proximity of Christmas, it would appear that through inadvertence, a specific claim for privilege relating to the reports produced by Dr Phillips was not made. The first we became aware of the Plaintiff having access to the reports of Dr Phillips, was upon receipt of your letter dated 18 May 2016. We are not aware as to when that access occurred. Section 122 of the Evidence Act 1995 (NSW) provides: - [set out in original letter] It is apparent that there has been no waiver of privilege by the Department. In this regard, we refer you to the authorities of:- Mann v Carnell (1999) 201 CLR 1 at [29]; [34]; Expense Reduction Analysts Group Pty Ltd v Armstrong Strategic Management & Marketing Pty Ltd [2013] HCA 46; 250 CLR 303 at [31]; [32]; Timothy Mills v Walter Wojcech [2011] NSWSC 86 at [60]; [61]; [64]; [65]; Biseja Pty Ltd v NSI Group Pty Ltd [2006] NSWSC 1497 at [12]; [13]; [16]; Boensch v Pascoe [2007] FCA 532; Sovereign Motor Inns Pty Ltd v Bevillista Pty Ltd [2000] NSWSC 521 at [23]. In the circumstances, there was not a knowing and voluntary disclosure by the Commonwealth of the reports of Dr Phillips and accordingly, there was no loss of client legal privilege. We thus require you to return to us, all copies of the reports of Dr Phillips within 7 days and undertake not to rely upon the contents of those reports, in the proceedings. Failing your agreement to the above, it is the client's intention to approach the Court and seek Orders to that effect (supra), together with costs."
The plaintiffs' solicitors neither responded to this letter, nor to the follow-up letters sent by Ms Taylor on 2 June 2016 and 9 June 2016. She tried calling Ms Breda on 4 and 5 July 2016 and left voice messages which were not responded to. On 6 July 2016 Ms Breda sent an email to Ms Taylor informing her that Michael Inger was to be the new solicitor in the matter and required "some time to get across the issue". Ms Taylor phoned Mr Inger on 19 July 2016, 3 August 2016 and 4 August 2016 and left messages with his paralegal but did not receive a substantive response. On 4 August 2016 Mr Inger wrote to the defendant's solicitor in the following terms: "We note that your correspondence of 15 December 2015 indicates that you became aware that the [sic] Dr Phillips produced material on that same date. You asked us not to inspect material until Tuesday, 22 December 2015. We did not inspect such material until after (we sought to obtain access to the documents produced by Dr Phillips on) 6 April 2016. You have had over 3 and a half months to obtain access to the documents which you did not. Firstly, if you intended to claim privilege over any documents produced it should have been completed, within the three and a half months prior to the Plaintiff obtaining access to the documents. Secondly, consistent with the findings in the Supreme Court of NSW matter, Hancock v Rinehart (Privilege) [2016] NSWSC 12, such argument to claim privilege should have been made prior to the intended production of documents date. On the material currently provided to us by you to date, we put you on notice that we will defend any application brought before the Court in relation to such orders sought in your letter and we will seek costs of doing so."
This letter led the Commonwealth to file the notice of motion on 26 August 2016 which is to be determined.

Consideration

It is common ground that the report of Dr Phillips was a confidential document that attracted client legal privilege. Accordingly, the question is whether the privilege has been lost such that it can be adduced as evidence on behalf of the plaintiffs, or can otherwise be used by them. The resolution of the dispute turns on the provisions of s 122.
In summary, the plaintiffs contended that the Commonwealth had lost its privilege in the report of Dr Phillips which was produced to this Court on subpoena by not expressly claiming it. Mr Armitage, who appeared on behalf of the plaintiffs, also argued that the wording of Mr Kathner's letter of 15 December 2015 was such as to engender a belief in the plaintiffs' solicitors that, if no claim for privilege was made by 22 December 2015, the Commonwealth intended to waive it.
In summary, the defendant contended that, at its highest, Mr Kathner had been inadvertent but that neither he nor the Commonwealth had acted inconsistently with the maintenance of the privilege, which, accordingly, inured for its benefit. Mr Jones, who appeared for the defendant, submitted that the fact that the Phillips material had been, unbeknown to the defendant, delivered to the Registry, where it remained for some time, was not particularly material to whether the defendant had behaved in a manner inconsistent with the maintenance of the privilege.
Many of the cases cited involved situations where the question whether a party had acted inconsistently with the maintenance of the privilege turned on actual, deliberate conduct of a party who did not intend to waive the privilege but who was taken to have waived it. This is not such a case. This is a case of inadvertence or oversight by a solicitor. The question is whether such inadvertence or oversight ought cause the solicitor's client to lose a valuable legal right (to maintain client legal privilege). This question is to be answered by reference to the wording of s 122 of the Evidence Act, and, in particular, whether the party has acted in a way that is inconsistent with the party objecting to the adducing of the evidence because it would result in a disclosure of, relevantly, confidential documents, which in this case are the report and notes of Dr Phillips following medico-legal assessments of the plaintiffs and the other material he produced in answer to the subpoena (being his clinical notes of the medico-legal assessments of the plaintiffs).
Although the question is one of the application of statutory wording, guidance can be obtained from the authorities which have considered the wording.
The question arose in Unsworth v Tristar Steering and Suspension Australia Ltd [2007] FCA 1081. Gyles J considered cases which had addressed the effect of inadvertence in the following paragraphs. "[6] Loss of client legal privilege for relevant purposes is governed by s 122 of the Act. Section 122(2) involves a party knowingly and voluntarily disclosing to another person the substance of the evidence. Section 122(4) deals with the substance of the evidence having been disclosed with the express or implied consent of the party to another person. Counsel for the applicant submitted that I should follow the decision of Jacobson J in Boensch v Pascoe [2007] FCA 532 where his Honour held (at [38]): "An inadvertent or unintentional act will not be sufficient to amount to waiver." I would normally follow such a recent and considered decision of a judge of the Court. However, the other authorities to which I was referred by counsel drew attention to the decision of Goldberg J in Meltend Pty Ltd v Restoration Clinics of Australia Pty Ltd (1997) 75 FCR 511, to which Jacobson J was apparently not referred, in which Goldberg J made a detailed analysis of the statutory provisions and the authorities and concluded that mere inadvertence or unintentional disclosure in itself is not sufficient to maintain privilege particularly where documents have been inspected. [7] Faced with that apparent conflict between judges of the Court, in the time available I endeavoured to see what has happened in other courts. That exercise has further confused the picture. For example, counsel for the applicant relied heavily upon the decision of Austin J in Sovereign Motor Inns Pty Ltd v Bevillesta Pty Ltd [2000] NSWSC 521 in which privilege was maintained, notwithstanding inspection of the document by the other side. On the other hand, Austin J considered a similar question in Australian Securities and Investments Commission v Rich [2004] NSWSC 934 and held that disclosure of documents which could be described as inadvertent, in a situation not unlike the present, was held to be knowing and voluntary pursuant to s 122(2) of the Act without reference to his decision in Sovereign Motor Inns [2000] NSWSC 521. The question is further complicated where the opposing party actually has a copy of the document in his possession available to be used. [8] At about the same time that Meltend 75 FCR 511 was decided, Hunt CJ at CL in New South Wales also reviewed the authorities in some detail in Director of Public Prosecutions (Commonwealth) v Kane (1997) 140 FLR 468. That judgment provides support for the view that a document sent inadvertently or mistakenly would not be disclosed voluntarily within the meaning of s 122, particularly if the hypothetical reasonable solicitor would have realised that it had been sent by mistake. Not long afterwards, Sackville J said something similar in BT Australasia Pty Ltd v State of New South Wales (No 8) (1998) 154 ALR 202 at 208-209. The authorities have again recently been reviewed by Harper M in the Supreme Court of the Australian Capital Territory in ACTEW Corp Ltd v Mihaljevic [2007] ACTSC 39 and Willett v Belconnen Soccer Club Ltd [2007] ACTSC 41. In both cases his Honour followed Meltend 75 FCR 511. Pagone J of the Victorian Supreme Court did the same in Body Corporate No 413424R v Sheppard [2007] VSC 179. [9] A single judge of this Court is in a difficult position given the current state of authority. It is not possible to reconcile all of the statements that have been made. However, for the purposes of this case, even if I were to apply the more restricted approach of Goldberg J, I favour maintenance of the privilege. The disclosure was inadvertent in every sense of the word and, in my opinion, an inspecting solicitor (and barrister) must have appreciated the probability of the documents having been included in the draft bundle by mistake as soon as the nature of each of the documents and the contents of them were appreciated. If it be relevant, I find that the solicitors for the respondent so concluded in the absence of evidence to the contrary."
When Mr Inger took over the matter, he may have been unaware of the precise terms of the order for access made by the Court on 14 December 2015 and, understandably, may have misapprehended the effect of Mr Kathner's letter of 15 December 2015. It does not appear that he relied on the defendant's failure to claim privilege on 8 February 2016, since he did not refer to it in his affidavit and there was no other evidence before me about what occurred on that day.
The narrative of facts set out above illustrates the pressures on solicitors engaged in litigation and the potential, particularly at busy times, or prior to the vacation, or when files change hands, for matters which would ordinarily be attended to in a timely, unambiguous way to result in misunderstandings. It is important that practitioners not take advantage of each other's oversights. Much can be resolved by communication. In the present case, the order for general access to the Phillips documents, which was apparently made on 8 February 2016, was at odds with a claim for privilege by the defendant. As there has been no factual inquiry in the evidence before me of how this came to occur it is not appropriate to speculate as to why the defendant, if it appeared at that return date, did not claim privilege over the Phillips documents.
The present case is not one of inadvertent disclosure, but rather inadvertent omission to claim of client legal privilege in respect of documents produced on subpoena to the Court by a third party (who was bound to produce them) which plainly attracted the privilege. Had the plaintiffs' solicitors, Ms Breda and Mr Inger, turned their minds to the question, they must have appreciated the overwhelming probability that the absence of a claim for privilege in respect of the Phillips documents was the result of an inadvertent oversight on the part of AGS. There was no conceivable forensic reason why the defendant, through AGS, would not press its claim for client legal privilege over medico-legal reports on which it did not intend to rely; and no conceivable reason why the process AGS adopted with respect to the documents produced by Dr Parmegiani (in respect of which privilege was claimed) would not also have been followed with respect to the Phillips documents.

At a glance

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Judgment (10 paragraphs)

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Legislation Cited (1)

Cases Cited (15)