four corners, page-2

Memoirs of a day in the Brisbane Supreme Court ASIC V Managed Investments

I was able to persuade a good friend to accompany to the supreme court in Brisbane yesterday ,but only with the promise of a free lunch thrown in .
Here are some personal impressions. Forget the Raymond Burr( Ironside)Tv court drama theatrics, The proceedings were excruciatingly mind-numbing tedious.
I counted some 9 wigs accompanied by a dozen well cut suits of legal associates in the courtroom and perhaps half a dozen onlookers, one of whom i identified
partly from his enormous bulk as Anderson the ex- chief financial officer who was taking notes - none of the other defendants were in the court
ASIC appear to be relying on multitudinous- in the tens of thousands of e-mails that it has extracted from the computer s of the defendants . -8000 alone from KIng ,and some 40 odd witnesses The defence case on this particular day comprised mainly of contesting and dissecting in minutiae every one of the emails provided as evidence by ASIC
This meant ,for example ,that one of the defence barristers would ask the judge for his particular client to adjudicate on whether or not the first three lines of paragraph of an email were relevant and could be admitted as evidence , The judge would then refer to so and so v so and so to make a decision on relevance. There could be half a dozen so and so v so and so cited by the judge in some instances which would then be referenced to in a thick law book.
Of course this sort of cross examination can be stretched out on ad- infinitum for each particular defendant . Now you Know why barristers earn such enormous sums of money from this type of repetitive ludicrous gobbledygook ,that they have turned into a pedantic artwork of making a fortune for themselves. The only comfort for me is there must be a vast occupational tendency for constipation and haemorrhoids amongst the legal profession .
Anyway here are few details that came out . It was suggested at one point that each one of the defence cases should in fact be run separately and closed before proceeding with the next, because the effect of a collective case would inevitably cause blame shifting, Now i believe the case has already run to many millions with delays from interlocutory proceedings , so that course of action would never be viable in term of costs , it was also stated that King and White" were very open with each other " however King was basically the top honcho running all aspects of the business - so i suppose the others directors will state they were only acolytes . The well documented defence used by many generals committing atrocities - I was only following orders defence,etc ,etc
. After three hours i glanced over at my friend who was now fast asleep, and decided to put him out of any further agony by abiding by my promise of a free lunch .

Keeping in mind that this is only a civil case .Regrettably even if found guilty , none of the defendants will ever receive a jail term in Australia and the costs will inevitably be in the many, many tens of million dollars of dollars from legal fees.

The case will be adjourned while Anderson and White go to NZ to face trial in this instance on criminal proceeding from investors who lost over 100 million ,and will proceed again in Brisbane on the 3rd August . .