JURY v WESTPAC BANKING CORP [1996] NSWCA 284

JURY v WESTPAC BANKING CORP SUPREME COURT OF NEW SOUTH WALES COURT OF APPEAL

PRIESTLEY and HANDLEY JJA and COHEN AJA 16 December 1996

[1996] NSWCA 284

Priestley JA This is an application to review an order by Sheller JA refusing to grant expedition to the hearing of the appeal in this matter.

In February of this year an application for the stay of the judgment against the appellants had been made pending the hearing of the appeal. Sheller JA heard that application and refused it principally on the ground that in his opinion the appeal had little chance of success.

The application today has been primarily based on a proposed ground of appeal which was not before Sheller JA in February when the application for stay was made. That proposed ground of appeal is that Rolfe J should have disqualified himself because of his having been concerned in the prosecution, when at the Bar, of Mr Whitbread, one of the witnesses in the matter before him in the proceedings last year from which the appeal is brought. It appears that the proceedings in which Rolfe J was concerned at the Bar, arose out of the affairs of Cambridge Credit. It has not been suggested that those proceedings are connected with the proceedings between the appellants and Westpac and the other opponent company, Bill Acceptance.

Thus we have the position today where the application for expedition is bound up with the assertion that there is more in the appeal than appeared at the time when Sheller JA looked at it in connection with the stay application. The only extra matter which is said to give legs to the appeal which Sheller JA thought had little chance of success, is the proposed added ground of appeal that Rolfe J should have disqualified himself.

That ground of appeal, in my opinion, is doomed to failure. In fact the prospects of the application to add that ground of appeal to the notice of appeal may themselves be very poor.