Examples of overarching obligations
- The Court of Appeal refused the request to appeal in Yara Australia Pty Ltd v Oswalwhen it ruled that the legal practitioners had breached their overarching obligations by filing excessive material with the Court
- The court ordered the solicitors to indemnify their clients for half of the respondent’s costs, and told them that they were not allowed to charge their clients for half of their own costs for preparing the excessive material.
- The Court interpreted the Civil Procedure Act to find that there is a prima facie assumption that unnecessary materials have been filed when there is an unusually large volume of papers; counsel will then need to show why it is not excessive and unnecessary.
4. The plaintiff in Setka v Abbott was barred from relying on new grounds for appeal that had not been previously stated in his original Notice of Appeal because, according to the Court, he had not facilitated the “just, efficient, timely and cost-effective resolution of the real issues in dispute” as he had not identified early enough the ones that required a determination. The judgment said that the Civil Procedure Act was “not simply a pious but toothless statement of the considerations which are to motivate participants, lay and professional, in civil litigation.”
5. Responses will vary. Students might suggest that the use of the overarching obligations by courts in cases such as Yara and Setka will result in courts inviting submissions from parties to scrutinise the use of excessive material or resources, as well as compliance with the overarching obligations more generally.