BERKELEY CHALLENGE PTY LTD v BLIGHT; TEMPO SERVICE PTY LTD v BLIGHT [1996] NSWCA 45

BERKELEY CHALLENGE PTY LTD v BLIGHT; TEMPO SERVICE PTY LTD v BLIGHT

SUPREME COURT OF NEW SOUTH WALES COURT OF APPEAL

MEAGHER and COLE JJA and ROLFE AJA 18 July 1996, 18 July 1996

[1996] NSWCA 45

UNCERTIFIED — unintelligible notes purporting to be a judgment set aside — duty of court to provide intelligible reasons for decisions.

Cole JA This is an appeal by two employers against awards made against them in the Workers Compensation Court. The orders of the Court are to be found at 520 to 522 of the appeal book. Preceding those orders in the appeal book between p499 and p519 are a series of pages. The document at 499 commences "Draft Judgment" which is struck through. The concluding words at 519 in handwriting are the words "Draft Judgment to keep in file."

The intervening pages are somebody's draft purporting to be the draft of Judge Manser. There are corrections of a typographical nature and a spelling nature. In addition to that, interspersed between p504 and p508, which apparently are consecutive, are three further pages, one typewritten and two handwritten which contain a series of figures.

Those pages obviously do not in sequence explain what the trial judge was trying to explain, if they are in truth part of his ultimate decision. It may well be that they are to be in place of material which is struck out in the middle of p508 and struck out on p510, there being an intervening p509 which contains some different figures.

The judgment, if it be a judgment, is not certified. This Court can have no assurance that what I shall describe as notes constitute the judgment of the Court below which were the basis upon which the orders to which I have referred at 520 and 522 were taken out

I must say that in my judicial experience, indeed my experience at the Bar, I have never seen a document produced in this form which purports to be a judgment of a Court.