MACARTHUR v WALTON [1995] NSWCA 263

MACARTHUR v WALTON

SUPREME COURT OF NEW SOUTH WALES COURT OF APPEAL POWELL JA

25 January 1995, 25 January 1995

[1995] NSWCA 263

APPEAL AND NEW TRIAL — Orders of Medical Tribunal — Appeal against — Application for stay pending appeal.

MEDICAL PRACTITIONERS — Misconduct, unfitness and discipline — Medical Tribunal orders for suspension from practice and revoking earlier non-publication order — Appeal from order for suspension — Application for stay of operation of orders pending appeal.

Powell JA By Notice of Motion filed, by leave, this day, the Claimant, who is the Appellant in what is, in substance, an appeal from a decision of the Medical Tribunal ("the Tribunal") delivered, and Orders made by the Tribunal, on 19th January of this year, seeks, in substance, Orders, first, staying the Order of the Tribunal suspending the Claimant from the practice of medicine for a period of 6 months and placing a condition on the Claimant's registration as a medical practitioner thereafter; and, second, either, an Order staying the operation of the Order of the Tribunal revoking an earlier non-publication Order made in the principal proceedings, or, if there be no power to make such an Order, an Order by this Court prohibiting publication of the proceedings before the Tribunal and its findings, and the names of the Claimant and of those of the Claimant's patients who were associated with those proceedings.

The proceedings before the Tribunal apparently arose out of complaints made to, either, the relevant local Health Service ("the Health Service"), or, the Medical Board ("the Board") by members of the hospital staff of one of the hospitals at which the Claimant was, and is, a visiting medical specialist, those complaints being to the effect that, on each of two nominated days, the Claimant, having performed surgery within his specialty, and while then assisting in the procedure of moving the anaesthetised patient from the operating table to the transfer trolley, touched the patient in question - each such patient being a female patient - in an inappropriate manner in an area described generally as "the pubic area".