JOHN STRBAK v NARELLE NEWTON [1989] NSWCA 202

JOHN STRBAK v NARELLE NEWTON

SUPREME COURT OF NEW SOUTH WALES COURT OF APPEAL

GLEESON CJ, SAMUELS and PRIESTLEY JJA 18 July 1989, 18 July 1989

[1989] NSWCA 202

JUDGES — failure to give reasons — the giving of reasons is an incident of the judicial process — but no requirement that reasons must incorporate an extended intellectual dissertation upon the chain of reasoning which authorises the judgment given — Housing Commission of New South Wales v Tatmar [1983] 3 NSWLR 378 applied.

Samuels JA The plaintiff, the respondent to the appeal, kept a horse in a paddock in the grounds of the Royal Ryde Homes adjoining a public street. On 6 August 1982 she was preparing to exercise the horse, which she said she had not ridden on that day, when she heard a loud noise, spun around to investigate its source and injured her right knee, which had already been the subject of previous injury and of surgical intervention by meniscectomy.

The cause of her alarm was that a car driven by the defendant, the present appellant, in which his wife and daughter were passengers, had run off the road, knocked over a small tree between the kerb and the fence enclosing the paddock, ploughed through the fence and demolished some feed bins, which the plaintiff had placed there for her horse, and other obstacles.

The plaintiff sued for the injuries and their consequences which her sudden movement had occasioned. The matter came first before Judge Foord on 7 and 8 May and 3 and 4 June 1986; that was very nearly four years after the accident, and upon his retirement, while the matter was part heard, was completed by Judge McGuire on 20, 21 and 22 July 1987; that was nearly five years after the accident, judgment being delivered on 24 July 1987.

It was agreed between the parties that the transcript of evidence taken before Judge Foord should be tendered and admitted before Judge McGuire although, all witnesses bar three, gave evidence before both of the judges.