WENTWORTH v WENTWORTH [1996] NSWCA 549

WENTWORTH v WENTWORTH

SUPREME COURT OF NEW SOUTH WALES — COURT OF APPEAL

PRIESTLEY JA, CLARKE JA and GROVE AJA 5 March 1996

[1996] NSWCA 549

Priestley JA. Following delivery of reasons, and the making of orders for judgment in the matter of what has been called the Taxation Appeal in the proceedings between Katherine Wentworth and Peter Wentworth, Miss Wentworth immediately indicated that she wished to ask the court to reconsider its reasons and re-hear the appeal. To allow her to make that application, the court suspended the operation of its orders until today. Prior to today, Miss Wentworth had lodged with the court a document of 42 pages in which she set out various of the matters upon which she based her statement that the court should re-open the hearing of the appeal.

Today when her application came on for hearing, she was invited to add any matters not included in her written document to the list of matters to the extent that they supported her application for re-opening.

The court has approached the matter as being the first of the two stages described by the High Court in Smith's case, namely the stage where the court considers whether it ought to allow a re-opening for the reception of further argument in an appeal. At this stage the court, depending upon thecircumstances, but in most cases, and in this one will consider the grounds upon which the application is based without becoming involved in re-argument of the matters argued or dealt with in the appeal. Re-argument is a matter for the second stage if the court grants the application.

Miss Wentworth, not unnaturally, sought to some extent to re-argue matters today but the court within what we think was reason, limited her to the statement of the matters upon which she relied.

Her statement along these lines about these matters having been completed the court is in a position to say that the matters relied on do not seem to us to justify the re-opening of argument on the appeal when the reasons for judgment previously delivered are properly understood.