Logue v The King

[2023] NSWDC 395

District Court

New South Wales

Medium Neutral Citation:

Logue v R [2023] NSWDC 395

Hearing dates:

22 September 2023

Date of orders:

29 September 2023

Decision date:

27 September 2023

Jurisdiction:

Criminal

Before:

Priestley SC DCJ

Decision:

1. Appeal allowed.

2. Conviction set aside.

Catchwords:

CRIME — Violent offences — Assault occasioning actual bodily harm

Cases Cited:

Filip Black v Regina [2017] NSWDC 326

Charara v R [2006] NSWCCA 244

Dyason v Butterworth [2015] NSWCA 52

KD v R [2020] NSWDC 237

Lunney v DPP [2021] NSWCA 186

Liberato v The Queen (1985) 159 CLR 507

R v Markuleski (2001) 52 NSWLR 82

Minister for Immigration and Border Protection v SZVFW (2018) 163 ALD 1

Browne v Dunn (1893) 6 R 67

Fox v Percy [2003] HCA 22

Texts Cited:

NA

Category:

Principal judgment

Parties:

Rex (The Crown)
Aaron Logue (The Appellant)

Representation:

Counsel:
Anderson for the Appellant

Solicitors:
Jay for The Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions

File Number(s):

2021/00224944

Publication restriction:

N/A

JUDGMENT

1. On 5 August 2021 at about 12 noon, the complainant Nicole Cardow went to lunch with her partner, Aaron Logue, who is the appellant, and her sister Andree. Later that day at about 6.30pm the complainant suffered injuries, which she alleges were inflicted by the appellant, who was convicted in the Local Court of assault occasioning actual bodily harm.

2. Commencing at lunch and ending at about 6.30pm the complainant drank, on her own admission, 10 glasses of wine, 2 cocktails, and a sip of limoncello, a liqueur. She stopped drinking at about the time she left the appellant and Andree at a second restaurant at the hotel they were staying at, where, in less than an hour, 2 bottles of wine had been ordered, which is included in the 10 glasses of wine. She left the accused and Andree in what was something of a pique, as she described them as acting like idiots. Prior to the alleged assault by the appellant upon her, the complainant admits that she slapped the appellant. Following that there was a scuffle; this scuffle is alleged by the complainant to be an assault, the central act of violence being the repeated bashing by the appellant of her head against a tiled wall. The appellant says that did not occur and what did occur was that he took defensive action to ward off the complainant, in the course of which she came to fall to the floor twice. The mechanics of the alleged assault as described by the complainant involved, on one version, the appellant with his left hand grabbing the left side of her face and pulling the right side of her head into the tiled wall 4 or 5 times, thereby bashing it. More commonly if people are facing each other, to grab a person by their left side would sensibly be expected to be done by the person’s right hand, though it is not impossible for it to be the left. So on this version of…