Colin Carruthers, QC "what Sir Edmund said is .. conjecture, hearsay, wrong in fact and entitled to no weight whatsoever".
Sir Ted Thomas “Either you have been bullshitting me or Alan has been bullshitting you. ."
Last month saw the enforced retirement of a Judge from the Grand Court of the Caymans, following a 47 page opinion from the Privy Council. Priya Levers, a Sri Lankan who married a Jamaican and practiced for 27 years, was deemed to have fallen short of the standards set by the Bangalore principles of Judicial [...]
It’s tough being a lawyer at the best of times – well, kind of – but being a lawyer in Iran is beyond even being a South Auckland boot-banger. Take women’s rights activist Shiva Ahari, (pictured) for instance, who now faces the highly sophisticated threat of being stoned to death for dodgy charges levelled against [...]
Ditzy Paris is in trouble all over again as her coke fell out of her handbag when she was only reaching for her lippy. What does a girl have to do to have some innocent fun these days? All that and now she and boyfriend Cy Waits, whoever he is, are darn well arrested. Again. [...]
Amid the talk about “Sian” and “Bill”, Sir Ted referred to “The ‘Three Musketeers” who sit in the eye of the Wilson storm. Along with himself in his self appointed role of course, but he’s more d’Artagnan than a Musketeer. They are all concerned over Alan, to whom Farmer owes his “primary obligation”, and of [...]
Legal eminence grise Sir Edmund “Ted” Thomas has been caught with his spam-guard down – and his highbrow eloquence. Writing to Jim Farmer, doyen of barristers, asking whether Jim had been “bullshitting” Ted is a bit like Bill (Wilson) asking Colin (Carruthers) about Alan’s (Galbraith) and his side deals. Or about “lowlife” Vince Siemer. Or [...]
Mohammad Mostafaei – along with the Iran regime’s sense of humanity – is missing! If you locate him please tell the Iranian authorities that he is (hopefully) alive and well and that they should start dusting off their nuclear scientist ploy of holding family members’ hostage. And they can fire their PR team while they’re [...]
There’s a palpable feeling that the Comeskey drama has not yet played out as the man who lived by the publicity machine was almost consumed by it last week as the imbroglio reached its climax, for the week at least. One of the Comeskey defences was the ‘legal aid rort’, based on allegations of wide [...]
Among the annals of unexpected defenders of accused persons, one of the most unusual in recent times has been the fight by Israeli criminal lawyer Yoram Sheftel, the defender of Ukranian-American Nazi death camp accused, John Demjanjuk. Sheftel, who has been called everything from the “conscience of Israel” to “Satan’s lawyer”, has exposed the failure [...]
Never one to pull punches, let alone cacti needles, CK has characterised Comeskey as the next Christopher Harder. Chris Comeskey acts for some of the worst crooks in town. He upsets people. There’s not much love in the Inn for him. He’s like the 2010 version of Christopher Harder. Seems like he’s been diddling the [...]
She was beautiful. She was confident. She was fed up with her malfunctioning laptop. But otherwise, she insisted, everything was “cool”. Anna Chapman came from Russia not with love, the FBI believes, but with dastardly intent to schmooze. She claimed to have a master’s degree in economics, an English husband and an online property business. [...]
Dame Margaret Bazley, the person-of-last-resort for every problem known to Government, evidently caught in the foul-mouthed crossfire between TV3’s Duncan Garner and Chris Carter, relating to an airplane exchange involving very naughty four-letter words and threats. For the Dame this must be too much. Dealing with pecuniary interests is one thing, but teaching MPs and [...]
By John Bowie – Alan Hubbard doesn’t fit the image of the modern financier. The Presbyterian woyserism. The old shirts. The VW. He’s as far removed from the bling-laden wide boys of the Viaduct and their flashy wives and girlfriends as a man can get without a time machine or, in Mr Hubbard’s case, a [...]
Justice Bill Wilson has an ally in his feisty friend Wellington lawyer John Tannahill who lept to the judge’s defence with a letter to the ‘Dominion Post’ telling us that he endorsed what had already been written to the newspaper by retired solicitor general and former High Court judge Richard Savage, who castigated Sir Edmund [...]
John Bowie – It’s an odd thing, but ‘diving’up here in the Cook Islands (or ‘lagoon-floating’ as I prefer to call it) which is analogous to the law with it’s oily-smooth surface, just as if BP were somewhere in the vicinity, and yet full of movement, colour, life-and-death struggles beneath. As we know, sunny islands [...]
This week’s brouhaha over the most recent Facebook group to be set up over a current trial, this time Weatherstone’s murder trial, raises once again the fast-developing issue of how to maintain the integrity of jury trials in the face of the pervasive reach of the Internet. ‘Google mistrials’ are already appearing overseas, with jurors [...]
