Clarence City Council v Howlin [2012] TASSC 26 case caught my eye because it contains a detailed history of the common law about declaring highways. It was a case dealing with subdivision of land, affected by whether a road out the front of land was a highway or a mere carriageway.I confess I was completely …
Continue reading I now declare thee road and highway: Clarence City Council v Howlin [2012] TASSC 26
We've previously discussed the sometimes-fine distinctions between errors of fact and errors of law. (In fact, when I look, we've covered it almost ad nauseam: Fishing for a fact? Ostrowski v Palmer; Mistake of fact or mistake of law? and Mistakes of fact, mistakes of law (revisited) are the main posts on the topic.)The Queensland …
Last week (here) Elucubrator digested Dover v Doyle [2012] VSC 117.For what it's worth, I found nothing nothing surprising in Bell J's finding that an offence under s 56 of the Road Safety Act 1986 must be conscious and voluntary. It hardly seems necessary, let alone desirable, to punish a person for conduct that is …
Last week the Supreme Court held that refusing a blood test must be done consciously and voluntarily in order to attract criminal liability.Dover v Doyle [2012] VSC 117 concerned judicial review of a County Court appeal against a Magistrate's finding.BackgroundOn 5 December 2007 Deborah Dover hit her head on the road when she was driving. …
Continue reading Dover v Doyle [2012] VSC 117: knock on the head knocks refusal case on the head
Offences under s 49 of the Road Safety Act 1986 are notorious for overlap.Since before Mills v Meeking (1990) 169 CLR 214 it has been observed that the prosecution gets significant forensic advantage from charging the same act in several different ways. (And s 51 of the Interpretation of Legislation Act 1981 allows them to …