Isbester v Knox City Council

[2015] HCATrans 25

[2015] HCATrans 025

IN THE HIGH COURT OF AUSTRALIA

Office of the Registry
  Melbourne  No M106 of 2014

B e t w e e n -

TANIA ISBESTER

Applicant

and

KNOX CITY COUNCIL

Respondent

Application for special leave to appeal

HAYNE J
NETTLE J

TRANSCRIPT OF PROCEEDINGS

AT MELBOURNE ON FRIDAY, 13 FEBRUARY 2015, AT 12.01 PM

Copyright in the High Court of Australia

MR B.R.S. KENDALL, QC:   If the Court pleases, I appear with my learned friend, MR A.S. FELKEL, for the applicant.  (instructed by Phoenix Legal Solutions).

MR P.R.D. GRAY, QC:   May it please the Court, I appear for the respondent.  (instructed by Maddocks).

HAYNE J:   Yes, Mr Kendall.

MR KENDALL:   May we begin by referring your Honours to what was said by the Court of Appeal at paragraph 53 of the reasons for judgment, application book page 70, and there the court accepted that:

The appellant’s legitimate expectation was simply that [the persons hearing the matter] would be persons who had no conflict of interest in the matter and had made no prejudgment of the matter.

The matter arises this way.  The applicant pleaded guilty to a series of charges concerning offences by dogs owned by her and, in particular, pleaded guilty to a charge number four wherein a Ms Hughes was the informant.  That plea of guilty enlivened a power under section 84P of the Domestic Animals Act whereby the Council could decide whether or not to destroy the dog.

The Act also provides that the Magistrates Court can decide to destroy the dog, and that is section 29(12) of the Act.  The evidence is that the Council had a policy of not applying to a Magistrates Court for an order for destruction of a dog in respect of which there had been a plea of guilty to an offence that enlivened the power under section 84P.

The evidence is also that the informant, Ms Hughes, played an active role in the entire process of gathering further evidence, negotiating a plea bargain which was made between the solicitors for the Council and the solicitors for the applicant, and in gathering other evidence, including evidence from the Department of Human Services, to the effect that the Housing Commission authorities would not allow Mrs Isbester to house two of her dogs, including the dog the subject of the application to the Supreme Court.

HAYNE J:   Just a matter of fact, I assume that the dog the subject of this application is still alive?

MR KENDALL:   Yes.

HAYNE J:   Yes.

MR KENDALL:   It has been kept in a cage, effectively, for 18 months.

HAYNE J:   Yes.

MR KENDALL:   The dog is a small Staffordshire terrier which bit a person on the finger, causing a one and a half centimetre laceration.

HAYNE J:   Yes.

MR KENDALL:   The Council convened a panel hearing.  The terms of the letter by which that panel hearing was convened are set out, among other places, but in paragraph 6 of the decision of the Court of Appeal and, significantly, in the letter ‑ this is application book page 48, and it is the sixth paragraph down in the letter which is set out on that page, it says who the panel is to consist of, namely, three Council officers, one of whom was Ms Hughes.  It then says:

The officer involved in the investigation may be present but they will not be involved in the decision making ‑

which means, in our submission, to at least an implication that it was understood by those convening the panel that a person who had anything to do with the investigation or the laying of the charges would not sit as a member of the panel.  Now the ‑ ‑ ‑

HAYNE J:   Well, whether or not the Council was alive to the point, your point is either good or bad.

MR KENDALL:   Yes, it is.

HAYNE J:   Yes.

MR KENDALL:   The crux of the matter is to be found in the Court of Appeal’s judgment at the section wherein they deal with conflict of interest, beginning at paragraph 66, application book page 73.  Before I get to that may I emphasise two things?  First, it was accepted that Ms Hughes was an accuser before the Magistrates Court.  Both the trial judge and the Court of Appeal held that she ceased to be an accuser effectively once that court had made its order and the hearing about the charge had been completed.

What happened was there was an agreed statement of facts and a plea of guilty, as I have indicated, and the view was taken, both at first instance and on appeal, that it is possible for a person to cease to be an accuser and thereafter the court, both at first instance and the Court of Appeal, held that Ms Hughes was no longer an accuser and, hence, for this reason among others, did not offend the principles which were recognised by this Court in Stollery.

Another matter was that the trial judge and also the Court of Appeal accepted that it was necessary for a person relying on conflict of interest type apprehended bias to demonstrate that the offending person had some special or personal interest in the matter.

HAYNE J:   Just interrupting you there, if we are at pages 71 to 72 of the application book, paragraphs 57 and following, is any of the matters listed there directed to apprehension of bias or are they all directed to prejudgment in fact?

MR KENDALL:   Well, some are apprehension of bias, for example, paragraph 59.  It is established in the evidence that well before the hearing of the charges before the Magistrates Court, Ms Hughes had approached the Department of Human Services which effectively operates what was the Housing Commission.  The ‑ ‑ ‑

HAYNE J:   I had read all those matters, I confess, Mr Kendall, as directed to actual bias, not apprehension of bias.  The court goes through a list of things saying, look at this, look at that, look at the other.  Those things do not show that in fact she had prejudged anything.  Now, I understood your complaint to be wider than a complaint of actual bias; rather your complaint was appearance of bias.

MR KENDALL:   Yes, and that is the essence of the complaint, your Honour.

HAYNE J:   Yes.  Where in the Court of Appeal do we find consideration of appearance?

MR KENDALL:   Well, it essentially begins at paragraph 69.

HAYNE J:   Yes.

MR KENDALL:   Having accepted at paragraph 68:

that Ms Hughes had a material part in the decision‑making process –

they then said at paragraph 69, application book page 74 ‑

Nevertheless, in our view the present case does not involve a conflict of interest in the sense identified.  We do not accept that the reasonable observer would conclude that the prior involvement of Ms Hughes in the matter gave rise to the real possibility of a relevant conflict of interest.

Beginning at paragraph 70 they set out their reasons for this, and if I can go through them briefly, paragraph 70:

First, the proceeding in which Ms Hughes was in effect the accuser had been determined –

That is what we call the accuser point.  We respectfully submit that that is wrong.  Next:

Secondly, the question of whether the Council should destroy the dog required the exercise of an administrative discretion turning upon consideration of the fundamental question whether the dog could live safely in the community and, if so, how.

This raised different issues from those raised by the prosecution in the Magistrates Court.  Well, we would say to that, yes, so it did.  The issue in the Magistrates Court was whether the applicant was responsible for the behaviour of her dog in circumstances where the dog bit a person. 

The issue before the Council is whether, as a consequence of the finding of guilt, the panel could decide that the dog should be destroyed.  They are different issues.  As I have already pointed out, the court itself had power to make an order for the destruction of the dog and it is significant that the magistrate in question indicated in his reasons that if it had been so, he would have made an order.  The magistrate took a somewhat extreme view about the sequence of events.  It is not necessary to go in detail about that immediately.  The third issue is paragraph 72 of the reasons for judgment:

the hearing was not required to be, and was not in fact, a quasi‑judicial hearing.

HAYNE J:   We have read all of those things, Mr Kendall.

MR KENDALL:   Yes, your Honour.

HAYNE J:   Can you encapsulate why you say the Court of Appeal is wrong, by the process of reasoning there identified, to reach the conclusion that it did?

MR KENDALL:   Well, yes.  First, it is wrong about accuser.  Secondly, it applied a wrong test, and the application of the wrong test derives from what we will call the second limb, described in paragraph 8 of the decision in the Ebner Case.  Your Honour no doubt recalls that the Ebner Case concerned allegations of pecuniary interest by a judge.

HAYNE J:   Ebner is directed to judicial decision‑makers.

MR KENDALL:   Yes.

HAYNE J:   This is an administrative decision‑maker.  True, it is deciding a question about, firstly, a matter of property but, perhaps more relevantly, a matter of emotional connection.

MR KENDALL:   Yes.

HAYNE J:   What do you say is the test that should have been applied and the Court of Appeal either did not apply or applied wrongly?

MR KENDALL:   Yes.  We say that a person who was a member of a panel convened by a council should have been independent and there can be no degrees whereby the principles of procedural fairness, in particular the principle requiring impartiality, can be watered down.

What we say happens when one looks at paragraph 70 through to 76 of the Court of Appeal’s reasons is that that is precisely what the Court of Appeal did.  The requirement for impartiality has been watered down.  Significantly, the Court of Appeal at paragraph 67 referred to the decision of this Court in Dickason v Edwards and set out the well‑known principle stated by Justice Isaacs in that case and accepted that, prima facie, a person:

must not act as a judge –

in a matter if they have been involved in some position in the case, and we submit that that encompasses Ms Hughes in the circumstances here present.  Now, Dickason which, of course, was overruled in part in the Ebner Case because it was decided in the Ebner Case that pecuniary interest did not lead to automatic disqualification, Dickason nevertheless remains important and, we would say, untouched by Ebner in respect of the requirement that there be impartiality.

That being so, we submit that there is an issue as to whether the Court of Appeal was correct in deciding that it was necessary for Ms Isbester to satisfy the second part of the test identified in paragraph 8 in Ebner.  That is to show that there was a logical connection between the perceived bias and the result.  So that in our submission ‑ and it is particularly important that in Ebner this Court did not refer to and, of course, did not distinguish or overrule Stollery, so that the Ebner Case upon which the trial judge relied and which the Court of Appeal in effect

followed, said nothing about Stollery, and Stollery was the case, the principal case, relied upon by the applicant at the trial below.

NETTLE J:   So, in your case, Ebner has really got nothing to do with it, it is the first leg of natural justice.

MR KENDALL:   That is right.

NETTLE J:   No man can be a judge in his own cause, and that was breached.

MR KENDALL:   Yes.  We say that Stollery should have been followed and it was not and that the attempt ‑ and I did not finish reading the rule because your Honours no doubt have read them, but the reasons set forth in paragraphs 70 to 75 of the Court of Appeal’s judgment simply do not justify a departure from the longstanding principle which finds its origin – well, not its origin, but which finds clear expression in this Court, first in the judgment of Justice Isaacs in 1910 in the Dickason Case.  Interestingly, the Dickason ‑ ‑ ‑

HAYNE J:   In this case, the informant in the processes in the Magistrates Court can, if he or she chooses, have the court decide, but if that is not done the decision has got to be made independently of those who have initiated the court process.

MR KENDALL:   Yes, and we point to the Act and we say ‑ ‑ ‑

HAYNE J:   I think we understand the point that you seek to make.  It might be convenient if we hear from Mr Gray.

MR KENDALL:   If the Court pleases.

HAYNE J:   Mr Gray.

MR GRAY:   Thank you, your Honour.  On the principal point that has been teased out during exchanges between my friend and the Bench, that is, is there some freestanding work to be done by the rule that a person cannot be a judge in their own cause, such that it has independent operation, independent that is from the rules of ostensible bias as developed in cases including Esber, I have this to say.  This is not a case where Ms Hughes, the relevant officer, was in any sense a judge in her own cause and that is because the issues that were live for determination before the delegate under section 84P of the Domestic Animals Act did not encompass any of the matters in which she had assisted in the antecedent steps relating to a prosecution in the Magistrates Court ‑ ‑ ‑

HAYNE J:   Why not?  She was informant in the Magistrates Court.  She could have, in the Magistrates Court, sought an order for destruction, could she not?

MR GRAY:   She could have and she did not.  It was not ‑ ‑ ‑

HAYNE J:   So having gone down that path in the Magistrates Court can she, is the question, participate in the decision which is to be made by the delegate?

MR GRAY:   The short answer, your Honour, is that yes, she can, and I will develop that submission now.  I will do so by reference to the structure of my friend’s reply submission which usefully distils the key points that are in contention.

NETTLE J:   On your case, if there were a policeman who were informant against a solicitor for some sort of offence of dishonesty and obtained a conviction, whether by trial or plea, it would be open to the solicitor ‑ the policeman to sit on the panel which subsequently decides whether the solicitor should be struck off because of the defalcation.

MR GRAY:   No, I do not make that submission, your Honour, and I do not have to.  Cases concerning sui generis rules concerning human conduct are different from and distinguishable from the administrative power conferred by section 84P to decide upon the fate of a dog, once the power to decide on that fate is enlivened by a conviction under section 29.  Each case must be decided on its own merits.  The principles concerning apprehended bias, including as developed in Esber, make it clear that one takes the perspective ‑ ‑ ‑

NETTLE J:   Mr Gray, bear in mind that the case put against you is not one of apprehended bias so much as actual bias, inasmuch as the informant was involved in making the decision to have the dog destroyed.

MR GRAY:   Well, I take your Honours firstly to the notice of appeal before the Court of Appeal to be found at application book 1‑42.  The sole grounds of appeal, grounds 1 and 2, concerned apprehended bias and apprehended bias only.

HAYNE J:   I think we have a false page reference, Mr Gray.  Sorry, what page?

MR GRAY:   Your Honour, I have it as page 42 going by the ‑ ‑ ‑

HAYNE J:   Forty two.  Sorry, I misheard.

MR GRAY:   ‑ ‑ ‑paginations on the top of the page.

HAYNE J:   My error.  Go on.

MR GRAY:   I will not read those grounds out to your Honours but your Honours will see that those grounds are ‑ ‑ ‑

HAYNE J:   Yes.

MR GRAY:   ‑ ‑ ‑ restricted to apprehended bias.  And I do not read the application for special leave in any different way and, indeed, the application for special leave could not extend beyond the boundaries of the appeal as constituted before the Court of Appeal, not without a great deal of trouble, in any event.  That is the short answer.

The longer answer involves an excursion into the facts to some degree and that would be necessary in order to make good the proposition I outlined at the outset, that is that the live issues before the panel and the delegate under 84P did not encompass any matters on which the officer concerned, Ms Hughes, could be said to have been a judge in her own cause.

The proper prism through which the case is to be assessed is the prism of the reasonable, or I should say the fair‑minded and well‑informed observer and whether that observer might reasonably form a view that the decision‑maker or the panel making a recommendation might not bring an impartial mind to the determination of the issues before the delegate, and I repeat, those issues did not include the matters on which the attempt was made at both stages below to impugn Ms Hughes, that is, on the question of identification of the dog, Izzy.

The identification of the dog, Izzy, as being the dog the subject of the admission of charge four before the magistrate, was not in contention before the panel or the delegate.  So, in no meaningful sense was Ms Hughes to be characterised as an accuser once the conviction was entered and the panel process leading to a decision under 84P commenced.

Your Honours, if I could just round out these points by reference to the structure of my friend’s reply submissions, which are to be found at pages 428 to 431, it is said that there are two special leave questions.  The first is said to be the extent of a:

requirement for a municipal council to comply with the rules of procedural fairness in circumstances where it appoints a panel –

et cetera.  Now, your Honours, I take issue with the way that is couched.  The extent of the relevant content of the rule against apprehended bias, in this context and on these facts, was correctly identified by reference to the way the case was advanced before it at paragraph 49, application book 68; that is, there must be:

no personal interest –

and there must be –

a willingness to give genuine and appropriate consideration to the matter ‑

for decision.  I have made my submission about what was the matter for decision.  It was limited to issues such as whether the dog, Izzy, could safely remain in the community without undue risk, militating against the objectives of the Domestic Animals Act.

Now, there are unshakeable findings by her Honour Justice Emerton and endorsed by the conclusions of the Court of Appeal that Ms Hughes relevantly did no more than go about her statutory task of assisting in the prosecution under section 29 of Ms Isbester in relation inter alia to the attack by the dog, Izzy, and there is nothing that the fair‑minded observer informed of the context would apprehend concerning any position that would be taken by Ms Hughes on the separate question of whether the dog, Izzy, should be destroyed.

As Justice Emerton and the Court of Appeal noted, in fact, if anything, an informed and fair‑minded observer might draw a contrary conclusion from the fact that such an order was not sought but, be that as it may, there is certainly nothing in the material that, as was found below, would give rise to the reasonable apprehension of prejudgment or bias of any description on the question of destruction of the dog.

The Court of Appeal at paragraphs 57 to 75, application book 71 to 75, addressed the way the case was argued on appeal by reference to allegations of prejudgment or conflict of interest, but in relation to both topics the Court of Appeal was addressing the case ‑ and I respond here to a question asked by your Honour Justice Hayne, a little earlier.  The Court of Appeal was addressing the case through the prism of the reasonable apprehension of bias, and can I refer your Honours in that regard to paragraphs 15 to 18 of the Court of Appeal’s judgment, which makes it clear that it embarked on the task of considering whether apprehended bias arose, and also to paragraphs 65 and 69 which made it clear that on both topics that was the way the court addressed the problem and, indeed, it had to do that, as I have demonstrated, the notice of appeal before it constituted the matter before it in that manner.

The Court of Appeal’s conclusion was that Ms Hughes’ mere prior involvement in the prosecution was not enough in itself to establish apprehended bias and the Court of Appeal also dealt with the various other points that were raised.  Ms Hughes had not shown prejudgment on the issues for deliberation by the panel or the delegate and did not have a relevant conflict of interest.  She had merely discharged her professional duties.

On so‑called question (1) of the special leave questions, as identified in the outline, in my submission, it is not necessary for the Court to go on and define exhaustively the metes and bounds of the content of natural justice in this case or the bias rule of natural justice in this case.  It is sufficient to say that on the facts, and in respect of the manner in which the applicant advanced the case, the applicant did not establish a case that demonstrated breach of those rules on the bases she had pressed.

The Court of Appeal’s conclusion that the mere involvement of Ms Hughes in the prosecution is manifestly correct in light of the statutory scheme, in my submission, in addition to the features identified and summarised by the Court of Appeal in paragraph 36 which is an important step in any analysis in this context, I wish to add a reference to a further provision for your Honours’ consideration and that is section 84Q.

Section 84Q of the Domestic Animals Act is to be found in the agreed bundle of provisions.  If your Honours have access to it, your Honours will see that section 84Q confers a duty on the Council to prosecute in respect of an animal – a dog or a cat ‑ that has been seized under Part 7A where an authorised officer forms a reasonable suspicion of certain matters, and those matters relate to offences that are set out in subsection (2).  Amongst those provisions your Honours will see at subsection (2)(c) a reference to section 29, the section that was engaged in this case.

This is a statutory indication that the Council is to have a prosecutorial role.  Married with a section 84P power, there is an indication to be gleaned from the statutory scheme as a whole that the legislature intends the Council to exercise both the prosecutorial power and the exercise of the disposal power, or consideration of its exercise, conferred by 84P. 

The legislature would be taken to understand that with councils there is, at the very least, institutional linkage between personnel, and there might in certain cases be the necessity, in the case of small rural councils, for example, for the same personnel to be involved both at the antecedent prosecution stage and at the later administrative stage.  This is an important indication that the Court of Appeal is correct in concluding that mere involvement without law ‑ without some cogent evidence of something in the nature of a logical connection between what has happened and an apprehension of bias ‑ without law of that kind, mere involvement in prosecution does not suffice to establish apprehended bias.

Question (2), as identified in paragraph 1 of the reply, is did Ms Hughes cease to be an accuser?  Your Honours, I do not agree with the precise terms of the question but in substance my submission is, yes, Ms Hughes was not an accuser.  I have already outlined the reasons for this.  It would be more accurate to say, in my respectful submission, that Ms Hughes never was an accuser in relation to the issues before the panel and delegate.  Sure it is, she was an accuser in the Magistrates Court on the question of whether Ms Isbester would be convicted under section 29 in relation to charge four, but that is nothing to the point for the reasons I have outlined.

In paragraph 2 of the reply it is contended by my friends that there is confusion on the part of the Court of Appeal between the concepts of conflict of interest and prejudgment.  Your Honours, I have already outlined why I say the Court of Appeal was addressing both of those topics through the prism of apprehended bias and was correct to do so.  The Court of Appeal reached conclusions on each of conflict of interest and prejudgment, they being the bases advanced for the apprehended bias that was alleged.  There was no confusion involved.

An important element of what the Court of Appeal set out to do was to try to identify whether the applicant had identified the logical connection required by step two in paragraph 8 of theirs, and there was no logical connection made out in this case.  With reference to paragraphs 3 to 4 of the reply, your Honours, Stollery is distinguishable because the issues before the board in Stollery were very much live issues on which the relevant manager had made a complaint and had a position to the effect that the relevant greyhound owner had offered him a bribe.  It is entirely distinguishable for the reasons I have outlined.

Paragraphs 5 to 7, your Honours, here it is said that there is a disconformity or divergence between New South Wales authority, including by reference to the cases of Rendell and Tuch; divergence or difference between those authorities on the accuser principle and the decision of the Court of Appeal in this case.  It is true that at page ‑ this is Rendell, your Honours, 10 NSWLR 499 ‑ it is true that at page 507, the paragraph at D to G there is a brief passage suggesting that it might have been irregular ‑ this is obiter dictum ‑ it might have been irregular for a police officer involved in the prosecution of Rendell some years before to have sat on the board that dealt with Rendell’s subsequent application for early release. In addition to that passage being obiter, your Honours, the conclusion ‑ ‑ ‑

NETTLE J:   Do you dispute that proposition?

MR GRAY:   I do not dispute the proposition in the facts of Rendell, although it was obiter, but I am going to make the point, your Honours, that it is clearly distinguishable from the present context for the following two reasons.  The conclusion is couched in very fact specific terms, focusing on the nature of the conviction in question, murder, and it is said there that the involvement of the officer in the prosecution of the claimant on the charge of murder, at the very least gives some ground for arguing that an objective observer would reasonably apprehend bias, but that is to be distinguished from the exercise of an administrative power in relation to a dog after a conviction of the owner.

Each case falls to be determined on its facts and murder and parole are a very different subject matter from the present context, but this point, your Honours, is also important.  The application for early release in Rendell’s Case involved a submission that there had been a miscarriage of justice at the trial. Your Honours will see this at 10 NSWLR at 500 F, and it was dealt with in the report of the board at 501 E.

That being the case, if your Honours, notwithstanding the fact that what is said in Rendell is obiter, I am minded to look into Rendell more closely.  That being the case, it is my submission that there was a live issue before the relevant board ‑ it was not called a parole board but, in effect, it was a parole board ‑ as to whether the trial below had resulted in a miscarriage of justice.  It was being contended on behalf of the prisoner that he should not have been convicted of murder.

That case was a case about, in effect, a mandatory policy of not entertaining applications for early release in cases where there had been a life sentence imposed upon a murder conviction.  It was not primarily a case about ostensible bias, ostensible bias came in by a side wind and, therefore, it was important for those representing the prisoner to try to take him outside the purview of the policy.  In the end, the case succeeded on the inflexible application of policy.

So, your Honours, the obiter in Rendell could not give rise to a conflict of the kind alleged and, in any event, Rendell is distinguishable.  On the question of subject matter – I see I am almost out of time, your Honours ‑ but on the question of subject matter, murder is very different from the 84P power and it would require a fanciful and impractical perspective and not a fair‑minded perspective to equate the two cases.

Tuch, your Honours, is the other case relied upon.  I ask your Honours to have regard to paragraph 195 of Tuch where Rendell is followed, but it is only followed on the point that it might be acceptable, for the purposes of application of these principles, for an investigator and not merely a witness to be regarded as an accuser.  But Tuch was very much a case where it remained a live issue for the relevant decision‑making body, a medical trial review panel, to consider the very thing that the complainant in question had been agitating for ‑ that is the suspension of a clinical trial ‑ so it is distinguishable.

Rendell is the only case of which I am aware in which there are two separate stages:  conviction and then a separate stage, and it is distinguishable for the reasons I have advanced.  Your Honours, the substance of the remaining paragraphs of the reply are essentially conclusionary.  I have already made my substantive submissions.  Unless there is anything further, those are the submissions for the respondent.

HAYNE J:   Thank you, Mr Gray.  Mr Kendall, we will not trouble you in reply but there are two matters that I should take up with you.  First, what is the best you can hope for out of this litigation?  Do it again, is it not?

MR KENDALL:   It is, your Honours.

HAYNE J:   Well, I have asked the question.  Second, your notice of appeal is one which I think would benefit from a deal of pruning.  I am not going to engage in drafting it now, nor are we minded to impose any condition about the grant of leave, but I do suggest that it might be prudent to prune it and, to change the metaphor, distil more carefully the points which are to be made.

MR KENDALL:   We will adopt the observations, your Honour.

HAYNE J:   I assume that this would be less than a day’s case.

MR KENDALL:   It is less than a day.  In our estimation, an hour a side with perhaps 15 minutes for a reply.

HAYNE J:   Well, a half day to a day.

MR KENDALL:   Yes.

HAYNE J:   There will be a grant of leave in this matter.  The solicitors instructing counsel will be given the directions for the filing of submissions.  Counsel and solicitors may or may not have been in Court when I said earlier the times fixed in the directions are shorter than normal.  Counsel

should order their affairs on the footing that it is possible that the case would be listed in April.  The timetable is to be observed.

MR KENDALL:   If the Court pleases.

HAYNE J:   Very well, call matter number six.

AT 12.40 PM THE MATTER WAS CONCLUDED