Dobbs & Dobbs (No 5)
[2025] FedCFamC1F 263
•2 April 2025
FEDERAL CIRCUIT AND FAMILY COURT OF AUSTRALIA
(DIVISION 1)
Dobbs & Dobbs (No 5) [2025] FedCFamC1F 263
File number(s): MLC 8793 of 2015 Judgment of: JARRETT J Date of judgment: 2 April 2025 Catchwords: FAMILY LAW – CONTRAVENTION APPLICATION – Breach of procedural order– Where the application for contravention was not dealt with at the principal proceedings – Where the application was brought in terrorem – Where the application was found to be trivial and lacking significance – Where the application for contravention is dismissed. Division: Division 1 First Instance Number of paragraphs: 10 Date of hearing: 2 April 2025 Place: Brisbane Counsel for the Applicant: Ms Daly Solicitors for the Applicant: Bramham Lawyers Solicitors for the Respondent: No appearance ORDERS
MLC 8793 of 2015 FEDERAL CIRCUIT AND FAMILY COURT OF AUSTRALIA (DIVISION 1)
BETWEEN: MR DOBBS
Applicant
AND: MS DOBBS
Respondent
ORDER MADE BY:
JARRETT J
DATE OF ORDER:
2 APRIL 2025
THE COURT ORDERS THAT:
1.The application for contravention filed 25 July 2024 is dismissed.
Note: The form of the order is subject to the entry in the Court’s records.
Note: This copy of the Court’s Reasons for judgment may be subject to review to remedy minor typographical or grammatical errors (r 10.14(b) Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia (Family Law) Rules 2021 (Cth)), or to record a variation to the order pursuant to r 10.13 Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia (Family Law) Rules 2021 (Cth).
Part XIVB of the Family Law Act 1975 (Cth) makes it an offence, except in very limited circumstances, to publish an account of proceedings that identify persons, associated persons, or witnesses involved in family law proceedings.
IT IS NOTED that publication of this judgment by this Court under a pseudonym has been approved pursuant to subsection 114Q(2) of the Family Law Act 1975 (Cth).
EX TEMPORE REASONS FOR JUDGMENT
JARRETT J:
This is an application for contravention that was filed by Mr Dobbs on 25 July 2024. It is supported by an affidavit filed on the same day. In the contravention application, the applicant complains that an order that was made by another judge of this Court, as long ago as 24 May 2024, was breached by the respondent in that:
The respondent, without reasonable excuse, did not file and serve a list identifying which paragraphs of her affidavits filed 22 January 2020 and 24 April 2024 upon which she seeks to rely at the hearing.
It is said that that order was breached. That order was made in the context of the case management by a judge of this Court of an application for contravention filed on 22 January 2020 prosecuted by the applicant in the principal proceedings – she is the respondent to the present application before me.
It is not apparent to me, and it is probably irrelevant, as to why an application for contravention filed on 22 January 2020 was not heard and determined until 2024, but that is only one of the curiosities in this case. There had been an earlier directions order made by the managing judge in February 2021 where she made a similar direction to the respondent to identify, from her affidavit filed on 22 January 2020, relevant paragraphs that she wished to rely on in her contravention application. By dint of the order of 20 April 2024, it seems that she did not comply with that order.
The contravention application in which those directions orders were made was heard and subsequently determined by a judge of this Court in Melbourne. The trial judge delivered a judgment on 13 August 2024 where she found the one count of contravention that was pursued against the applicant before me proved. That contravention was said to be a contravention of an order that had been made on 15 February 2018 by another judge of this Court, then known as the Family Court of Australia, which required the applicant before me to transfer to the respondent before me a certain parcel of real property. Her complaint was that he had not done so in a timely way, and her complaint was upheld. I am told in submissions that the judge's finding about that on appeal were not disturbed.
In her reasons for judgment at paragraph 6, the primary judge says this:
The applicant did not rely on her affidavits filed 22 January 2020 or 24 April 2024 in support of her application. They were lengthy and contained considerable material that was not relevant to the matter before the Court. Rather than undertaking the tedious and time-consuming process of objections, the parties very sensibly prepared a statement of agreed facts which the applicant adopted as her evidence-in-chief.
The balance of her Honour's reasons make it plain that the respondent before me – the applicant before her Honour – was cross-examined, as was the applicant before me – the respondent before her Honour. Both parties before her Honour were represented by counsel.
It is beyond curious, then, that this application for contravention, filed before her Honour had heard and determined the contravention application brought by the principal applicant, was not dealt with in those proceedings, either in terms of it being dealt with as an application for contravention proper, or perhaps, more appropriately, as something in the course of the management of that case. Be all that as it may, I now have before me the contravention. The respondent has not appeared, and so it seems to me that, on its face, the applicant establishes that the respondent has contravened the directions order that was made on 24 May 2024.
He seeks the imposition of a fine. It was said that this application was brought with a view to perhaps leading to the ability to settle all of the outstanding contravention applications. I put to counsel for the applicant that meant that this application was brought in terrorem, with which she agreed. It was also suggested in submissions that the respondent's failure to appear today meant that there was a lack of opportunity to settle the application.
I really got the impression, both from the affidavit filed by the applicant in support of the contravention and the submissions that were made, that this application is nothing more than a tit-for-tat application, to use the vernacular, and a means by which, or a strategy by which, the applicant before me might have forced the respondent into withdrawing her own application.
But as the sanction that was imposed on the applicant before me by the previous judge in the previous contravention application shows, a fine of over $7,000, his contravention was not trivial. This contravention, on the other hand, is. It is a breach of nothing more than a procedural order which, in the usual course, is dealt with by a judge when it is raised with him or her by the parties in the usual way.
If it truly is the case – and I doubt it – but if it truly is the case that this contravention led to the adjournment of this application, then no doubt the appropriate course would have been to either ask for costs of the adjournment thrown away by the respondent's failure to comply with the order or, at the very least, have those costs reserved. It is not suggested that either of those courses were adopted.
I do not intend to impose any sanction in this case upon the respondent for what appears on its face to be a contravention, nor do I intend to make a declaration that she has contravened the orders. To do so would only encourage these sorts of frivolous applications, which border on an abuse of process. It is really quite outrageous to suggest that this application has any significance whatsoever.
I certify that the preceding ten (10) numbered paragraphs are a true copy of the ex tempore Reasons for Judgment of the Honourable Justice Jarrett. Associate:
Dated: 24 April 2025
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