Thompson, A.D. v The Queen

CATCHWORDS

Jurisdiction - criminal

trial

- murder - occurrence

wlthin

jurisdiction of death or act causing	death - necessity for
special verdict.

Evidence - criminal trial - admissibility of evidence

of similar

facts - accused convicted of other murders	- striking similarity
of facts.

Evidence - crlminal trial - admisslbility of evldence

tests

carried

out with similar

vehicle

- admissibility of expert

opinion as to speed of motor vehicle based on damage caused by

impact with stationary oblect.

Crimes Act 1900 (N.S.W.), 6.25

Cases

v. The Oueen (1982) 150 C.L.R. 580

Sutton v. The Oueen (1984) 152 C.L.R. 528

The Oueen v. Ireland No. 2. 1975 S.A.S.R. 6

Cooper V .

(No. 2 ) (1975) 12 S.A.S.R.

151

ALLEN DOUGLAS

THOMF'SON v. THE OUEEN

No. ACT G8 of 1986

FORSTER, EVERETT L MILES JJ.

CANBERRA

12 SEPTEMBER 1986

IN THE FEDERAL COURT OF AUSTRALIA )

)

AUSTRALIAN

CAPITAL

TERRITORY

1 )

DISTRICT REGISTRY	)	No. ACT G8 of 1986
1
GENERAL DIVISION	1	SCC No. 39 of 1985
On appeal from the Supreme Court of the Australian Capital
Territory

BETWEEN

ALLEN DOUGLAS THOMPSON

Appellant

THE OUEEN

Respondent

MINUTE OF ORDER

JUDGES MAKING ORDER	FORSTER, EVER=	Et MILES JJ.
WHERE MADE	CANBERRA
DATE OF ORDER	12 SEPTEMBER 1986
THE COURT ORDERS TH.4T:

1. The appeal be dismissed.

Note:

Settlement and entry of orders is dealt with in Order 36

of the Federal Court Rules.

IN THE FEDERAL

COURT OF AUSTRALIA

)

AUSTRALIAN	CAPITAL	TERRITORY	)
1

DISTRICT REGISTRY	)	No. ACT GB of 1986
)
GENERAL DIVISION	1	SCC No. 39 of 1985
On appeal from the Supreme Court of the Australian Capital
Terrltory

BETbEN:

ALLEN DOUGLAS THOMPSON

Appellant

THE

O U E E N

Respondent

REASONS F O R JUDGMENT

Forster, Everett

& Miles JJ.

THE COURT :

The appellant was convicted after

a trial by jury

in the

Supreme Court

of the Australian Capltal Territory

upon charges of

murdering two sisters, Mirjana and Ljiljana Milosevic

December 1981. Upon conviction

he was sentenced to imprisonment

for llfe with respect to each

of the two murders.

appealed

against his convictions upon eight stated grounds, three

of which

were abandoned at the outset

of the appeal hearing

but new

grounds were then

added.

The grounds argued are as follows :

2 .

“1. That His Honour

erred

admltting

evidence

relating to the murder by the appellant of four

persons at a residence

known as 56 Hemmings

Crescent, Richardson on 28 March 1984.

2 .

That His Honour erred

In refusing to direct the

jury to find the appellant not guilty when there was no or insufficient evidence to establish that

the deaths of the alleged

victims occurred withln

the Australian Capital Territory.

3 . That the verdict was unsafe and unsatisfactory.

4. That His Honour erred in failing to direct the jury to return a special verdict as to whether or not

the deaths

of the alleged victims or the acts

causing such deaths occurred within the Australian

Capital Territory.

That His

Honour erred in admitting evidence

certain experiments conducted under the supervision

of Detective Inspector R.T.

Ninness on 2 9 May 1984.

6. His

Honour

erred

in failing

to give adequate

directions to the jury as to the relevance of the evidence concerning the murders at Richardson.

7. His

Honour

erred

admltting

evidence

the

effect that the motor vehlcle could

not have

been

travelling at more than

15 miles per hour

The grounds of

appeal fall into three

categories -

first, the similar fact evidence (grounds 1 and 6

, second, the

3 .

question of the court's jurlsdiction (grounds 2 , 3 and 4), third, the experiment and expert evidence (grounds 5 and 7 ) . We

propose in due course to deal	with the grounds of appeal category
by category.

Before

we do so it is necessary

recite

some

background facts so that the grounds of appeal may be understood

in context.

On 30 December

1981 Mir~ana and Lliljana Milosevic or

rather their dead bodies were found ln

a burnt out motor car

the A.C.T. The appellant, who had been drivlng the motor car,

gave an account to police that he was driving along the Monaro

which had collided wlth a tree adjacent to the Monaro Highway in the lights of an oncoming car and that as a consequence his car left the road and struck a tree at about 40-45 miles an hour.

The car burst into

flames, the appellant was

able to get out, but

was unable to get the two girls out

and hey were burnt to death.

The matter was investigated in

rather desultory way by the

police and others and in the end no

steps were taken by police

against the appellant until some years

later. On the night

Wednesday 28 March 1984 the accused killed the four occupants

a house at Hemmmgs Crescent, Richardson In the A.C.T. These

persons were Radmilla Milosevic, a sister of the two girls, the

subject of the present charge, her

facto husband and two

children.

Each of these four deceased persons were shot in the

4 .

head and there were other wounds. There were other similarities

between the killlngs, the

sub~ect

the present charges and

those

later

killings

which

we will deal with later.

The

appellant admitted to police that he had murdered these four

persons and he was later convicted

with respect to those murders,

but he has always steadfastly asserted

his innocence on the

present charges.

The occurrence of these four killings and the

appellant’s connection with them led the police to reinvestigate

the deaths of Mirlana and L ~ i l ~ a n a with somewhat greater

thoroughness and their bodies were exhumed and subjected to a

thorough post-mortem examination, the results	of which we	deal
with later.

We deal first with the question

of jurisdiction because,

if the Supreme Court

of the A.C.T. had no jurisdiction to try the

appellant the other grounds of appeal become irrelevant. It

conceded by the appellant and the respondent

and,

in my view,

qulte rlghtly conceded, that the jurisdiction

of the Supreme

Court of the A.C.T. to try the appellant, depended upon

the

occurrence within the geographical limits of the A.C.T. of either the deaths of the two deceased glrls or the act or acts causing

their

deaths.

(See

s.25 Crimes

Act

1900

(N.S.W.) in

its

application to the A.C.T.).

The evidence as to this is

sparse.

The appellant IS

probably the only person who knows where the

girls died.

He says that they died

in the A.C.T. when the car

driven by him collided with the tree and burst Into flames. It is not disputed that this tree is in the A.C.T. The Crown case

however was that the glrls had each been shot in the head and

that the collision of the car

with

the tree and the subsequent

flre were staged by the appellant in order

to conceal his crlme

of killing the girls by shooting.

If he did shoot them he was

of course successful in his attempt

at concealment for some time

at least. Whatever the truth may be about the circumstances of

the deaths of the two

girls, the appellant

1s almost certainly

the only person who knows where the deaths occurred and has

steadfastly malntained that the girls died after the collision

with the tree. Other evidence of the happenings

on the night of

the girls' death 1s also sparse.

The older of the two girls,

Mlrjana, had been livlng with the appellant in Queanbeyan in

New

South Wales.

The younger girl, Ljil~ana,

had been livmg with

her mother in Ainslle In the A.C.T.

The appellant and Mirlana

had left the house at Ainslie

with Ljiljana at about

9.30p.m.

Intending, so the appellant told police,

to go to Bredbo, a town

in New South

Wales.

told police that he and the two girls

were returning from Bredbo and travelling

along

the Monaro

Highway towards Queanbeyan when the car hit the tree.

The

tree

was only some 45 or 50 metres from the border between the

A.C.T.

and New South Wales but

was 10-12 kilometres f rom where the

Monaro Highway

crosses the border between the

A.C.T. and New

South Wales, the road running fairly close alongside the border

for some dlstance after crossing It. If

the appellant and the

girls had been to Bredbo

he said they had they had travelled

for some 10-12 kllometres wlthln the

A.C.T. when the car hit the

tree.

It 1s

conceded by counsel for the appellant that the

directions to the jury of the trial judge

as to jurisdictlon were

impeccable.

With this concession

we agree and although the

evidence as to where the deaths of the two girls

took place was

not

extensive, such evidence as there was pointed to the

A . C . T .

as being the place. The directions of the trial judge as to jurisdictlon were very clear and there was evidence upon which

the jury could find

as they

must have done that the deaths

occurred in the

A . C . T .

and n o t in New South Wales.

There was a l s o a contention that the trial judge should

have sought a

special verdlct from the jury

on the question of

jurisdiction. Suffice

it to say that although such a verdict is

sometimes sought from

a jury (see for instance B. v. Graham

(1984) V.R.

649 where that course was approved) there appears

be no authority which says that

o take a special verdict is the

only proper way to proceed.

In the present case the learned

trial judge made it perfectly clear

to the jury that the question

of the court's jurisdiction

to try the appellant was

a question

of fact for them to decide and that unless they were satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that either the act or acts causing the

girls' deaths or the

deaths themselves took place in the A . C . T .

then they should go no further.

We are unable to say that

the

learned trial ludge was wrong

ot to seek from the jury a special

verdict as to jurisdiction, but instead to dlrect them that the question of jurisdiction was for them to decide and that unless they were satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that the court had

jurisdiction, they could not properly convict the appellant.

It is argued under ground

that the verdicts

were

unsafe and unsatlsfactory because there was insufficient evidence

that elther the deaths or the acts which caused them occurred in

the A.C.T.

What we have said already disposes of this ground.

Grounds of appeal numbered

2 , 3 and 4 are accordlngly rejected.

We deal next

with grounds 1 and 6 concerning the similar

fact evidence admitted by the learned trial judge. Sergeant

Lanham, a

police officer, was permitted to glve evidence

admissions made to him by

the appellant that he had shot to

death

the

four

persons

the house

Richardson.

Circumstances

surrounding these four murders were proved and there was evldence

arismg out of the post-mortem exammation of the corpses of

the

two deceased In

the present case from which the ]ury

could,

they were so mlnded, draw certain concluslons.

The account of

the deaths of the two girls given by the appellant was that they had died in a fire after the car in which they were passengers

had hit the tree just off Monaro Highway.

The Crown contended

that the appellant had shot the two

girls and then staged

collision of the vehicle

with a tree and the burning

of the

vehicle in order to cover up evidence

of the shooting.

The

issue therefore was whether the girls had died in a motor

accident as

the appellant sald

or by being shot

as the Crown

said. If the appellant were to be convicted it

was

necessary

for the Crown to prove not only that the girls were shot, but

that the appellant shot them. It is argued by the Crown that

the evidence of the Richardson killings was relevant

prove

both that the girls were shot and not killed in

a motor accident

and also that the appellant was responslble for the shooting and

that this was not accidental.

A voir dire hearing was conducted by the learned trial

judge.

In order to enable hlm to rule on the admlssibillty of

the

evidence

proposed

led

concerning

the

Richardson

murders, the Crown Prosecutor gave details

of this evidence and,

in the absence of the lury after hearing argument, his Honour

declded to admit the evidence upon the ground that there was "a

striking similarity" between the facts of the Richardson murders

and the present case

and that the "similar facts" were relevant

a5 tending to show otherwlse than via propensity that the accused

committed the acts forming the basis

of the charge because

other occasions he had committed a crime in	a particular somewhat
unusual manner.

The points of similarity mentioned by his Honour were

follows :

"(l) the family

connection between each set of

victims;

( 2 ) each of the s l x

victims involved in the four

Richardson murders and those for which the

accused 1s being tried,

was shot;

(3) each such victim was shot

with

a similar

calibre rifle;

( 4 ) each shot was through the head

of the victim;

(5) each Richardson vlctim was shot

quarters and it was highly likely that the two

victims of the present charges were also shot

at close quarters;

( 6 ) in

respect

the

Rlchardson

murders

the

accused had attempted to destroy the evidence

and he had done llkewise in relation	to	the
present offences;

( 7 ) the attempt to destroy evidence

was in both

instances by fire;

( 8 ) in both instances the

fire had been set by

using petrol; and

( 9 ) the accused was present at the scene of

each

set of killings shortly before they occurred

and was the last person to see the victims

alive.

Without

setting

out

the

evidence

detail

sufficient to say that there was evidence upon which the jury

could have made the findlngs of

fact mentioned in each

the

above points of similarity.

The

learned trial judge made it

clear to the jury that

It was for them to decide whether the

facts

were

established

and,

s o ,

whether

there

was

such

striking similarity between the two incidents

as to warrant their

finding that the appellant

was responsible for the killing

of the

two girls as well as the Richardson killings.

It was argued by counsel for the appellant that points

( 2 1 ,

(31, (4)

and

( 5 ) should not be relied upon because, if the

Crown wished to prove that the glrls were shot, it

is a

faulty

reasonlnv process to assume this fact for the purpose of proving

it. It

was further said that if the glrls were shot then

no one

other than the appellant could

have shot them.

I h e answer to

10.

this contention

is, we think, that the appellant

has always

maintained and maintalned at the trial that the girls died in a

motor accident.

He never admitted shooting them

so that this

fact remained to be proved

as well as the basic fact

of the

shooting. Another answer is that whereas there was evidence

apart from the simllar fact evidence

from which the jury could

find	beyond reasonable doubt that the girls were shot, the

evldence was not so strong that they must

so find. In these

circumstances the evidence

of the Richardson murders,

as it seems

to us, strenghthens considerably the existing evidence tending to

prove that the girls were shot.

The legal

principles

governing the admissibility of

similar fact evidence have been dealt

with by the High Court in a

number of recent decisions, notably

Perry V. The Oueen (1982) 150

C.L.R. 580 and Sutton v. The Oueen (1984) 152 C.L.R. 528, both of which cases were cited and relied

on by the learned trial judge

in his considered	reasons	for	admitting	the	slmilar	fact
evidence.

In both

of these cases, notably Sutton, the test

for

admissibility was put with respect to a case like the present. "The question is whether each of the crimes was committed in a manner so strikingly simllar to the other that a jury could

reasonably conclude that the same person was guilty

of all the

crimes", Sutton v. The Oueen (supra) per Gibbs, C.J. at 535.

the present case the murders at Richardson and the killing of the

11.

two

girls

and

the

circumstances

surrounding

each were so

strikingly slmllar that the jury could reasonably conclude that

the appellant was guilty

of all s1x murders.

The admisslbillty of the similar fact evldence could be

supported in another way and that is to negative the proposition

should it be put, that the shooting of either

of the girls was

accldental. It could

also be supported in order to negative the

defence of the appellant that the girls died as

result of the

vehicle's collision wlth a tree and

a subsequent fire.

For this

purpose points ( 2 1 ,

( 3 ) , (4) and

( 5 ) should be disregarded as it

would be wrong to assume that the

girls were shot for the purpose

of proving

this

fact.

However

the

remaining

points

similarity would, in

our view, together amount

sufficiently

strlking similarity as to tend

to prove that the girls

who died

in the appellant's presence dld not die as he said they did, but were shot by him. It is also put that even if the evidence were

technically

admisslble

the

learned

trial

judge

should

have

declined to admit

it on the basis of the exercise

of his

discretion. The learned

ludge

however

decided

admit

the

evidence

and we can

see no reason

whatsoever

justify

interference with the exercise

of his discretion.

The complaint in ground

6 is that the learned trial

ludge failed when asked to direct the

]ury

to disregard the

similar fact evldence.

If the evldence were properly

admitted,

as we think it

was, it was not wrong for the judge to fail to

12.

direct the jury as asked, indeed he would have been wrong to	do
so.

Grounds 1 and 6 are therefore dismissed.

We come now to the evidence

of tests and expert opinion

mentioned in grounds 5 and

The experiments conducted under

the supervlslon of the witness Ninness fell into two classes.

The first may be described as the crash experiment and the second

the fire experiments.

The account of the appellant to pollce

was, as we have said, that

he was driving along the Monaro

Highway when he was dazzled by the lights of

an oncoming vehicle.

He drove off the road and without braking the car

he was driving,

collided with the tree at a speed of 40-45 miles an hour.

The

appellant said that the car then burst into flames, the

fire

starting in the engine compartment and spreading to the inside of

the car, engulfing it so rapidly that although he was able

to get

out of the car and save

himself, it was impossible

for him to get

the two girls who were his passengers out

of the car.

In order to test the accuracy of the accused's account police under the supervislon of

Sergeant Ninness, as he then was,

conducted the crash tests in question. In this test Ninness

himself steered

a car of

a similar age and model to the car

driven on the night in question by the appellant. This car was pushed 40 or 50 yards down a hill and steered by Ninness into a

tree of similar size to the

tree

on the edge of the Monaro

13.

Highway with which the appellant's car collided.

The car

was

timed by another police officer as It traversed the last four

metres of its

~ourney

and the speed was calculated at sixteen

kllometres per hour.

A video film was made of the car's journey

and this and still photographs showed the damage to the front

the car.

There

were

also

photographs

of the

front of

the

appellant's car and a clip from

a television news film

of it.

Sergeant Ninness slmply gave evidence

of this experiment and

expressed no opinions.

The jury were invited to compare the

photographed condition of both vehicles which showed, it was argued, that the damage to the front of the appellant's vehicle and the damage to the front of the test vehicle were similar

which it was said made incredible the account of the collision

with the tree at

40-45 miles an hour given by the appellant.

There were also the

fire tests carried out

with the same

car. Police li€ted the bonnet of the car and poured

small

amount of petrol

on to the engine near the petrol pump and

ignited it.

This fire burned for 65 seconds and went out.

the second test a hose full of petrol was placed in the engine

and some petrol

was poured on to it and the hose was cut and the

petrol whlch came out was ignited.

This fire burned for

seconds and went out except for

a tiny flame. Next,

a litre of

petrol was poured all round the engine, the bonnet

was closed and

the fire ignited.

This fire flared up intensely and quickly

died down after 77 seconds. No

flame went through the fire wall

in any of the first three tests. Finally,

with

the bonnet

14.

raised, the engine compartment, including the

fire

wall, was

saturated

with

five

lltres

petrol.

The vapour

from

the

petrol was llt and

a very intense flre resulted. After four and

a half minutes the fire came through the

fire

wall into the

passenger

compartment.

After

another

two

minutes

and

ten

seconds

there

were

flames

and

smoke

coming

from

under

the

dashboard. Gradually the

fire moved into the interior

of the

vehlcle and after fifteen

mmutes the interior was well alight.

There was evidence that the engine

of the appellant’s

vehicle would have stopped on impact

with the tree which would

have caused the petrol pump to stop pumping petrol.

The

petrol

tank was intact and the carburettor also appeared to be. There

was also evldence that there would have been only less than

cupful of petrol	in	the	fuel	lines	and	a	cupful	in	the
carburettor.

The evidence of the petrol tests and the evidence as to

the quantity of petrol available in

the engine compartment of the

subject car and the lack

damage to the petrol tank were

tendered by the Crown at the trial over the objection

the

appellant‘s counsel in order to

show that the appellant’s account

of his car being engulfed in

flames after the collision with the

tree could not be true and also

his account of being able to get

out of the car and being unable

to get the girls

out.

15.

The evidence as to the crash test and the

fire tests was

objected to but was allowed by the learned trial judge. In our view he was right to do so. The matter seems to us to be

covered by the judgment of the

Full Court of the Supreme Court of

South Australia In The

Queen v. Ireland (No. 2 ) (1975) S.A.S.R.

that case the prosecution tendered evidence of tests

conducted by a police officer

involving the rolling of

a body

over the floor of

a room and the

walking of a specified distance

to check the tlme taken

by the walk.

The Court held that the

evidence of the results of the tests was admissible. At page

of the jolnt judgment the

following passage appears

"In practice, evidence of experiments, more often

than not, is offered by experts and its purpose is

frequently

confirm

the

opinions

those

experts arrived at by an examlnation of real evldence that has been found and collected at the

scene of the trial.

But, of course, the use of

experiments for the purpose of enlightening

a jury

is not limited to those

so conducted.

It seems

to us

that, given conditions for the experiment

sufficiently similar

to the conditions in which

the act or event under consideration must

have

been done or occurred, an experiment carefully

performed

and

conscientiously

recorded

and

reported may frequently

be of great assistance to

the jury in its deliberations. Some experiments

can be carried out only by experts, occasionally

by experts with high qualifications and advanced

skills, but others can be carried out by ordinary

laymen by the applicatlon of common sense and the

employment of

such tools, materials and devices

that are readily at hand."

and at page

15 a further passage :

"In the present

case, we are

of the opinion that

accounts of both experiments and of their results

were admissible; any criticism

of the evidence

goes, in our opinion, to Its weight and not to its

admissibility.

In our opinion,

the

circumstances of this case, the jury were able

. .

16.

readily to assess the assistance that could safely

be	derived from the evldence relating to the

experiments, to apprise themselves

of any dangers

inherent m

the

use of that evldence, and to

discard it wlthout unfair damage to the accused's

interests If its weight proved to be negligible."

There is surprislngly little authorlty directly in point

apart from this case.	We are content to	follow p-. V.	Ireland
(No. 2 ) (supra).

There remalns the argument chat

the circumstances of the

tests in each category were

not

sufficiently similar to the

circumstances on the night the girls were killed.

So far as the

impact tests are concerned there

are

number of points of

difference suggested by counsel

for the appellant.

The

engine

of the test car

was

not running, there were no working brakes

fitted to it, the interior fittings

had been modified and the

vehicle was running slightly downhill when it struck the tree in

the test.

None of these differences seem to

us to have been of

sufficient significance to render the tests

so dissimilar from

the circumstances of the collision of the appellant's car with the tree so as to make the tests irrelevant. It is also pointed out that in the tests there was only one person in the car and in

the collision of

the appellant's car

wlth the tree there were

three.

There is no evidence as to the weight of any of the

persons lnvolved or of the

weight of the car. If speculation

were permlssible we should have thought that the presence of two

girls

the

appellant's

car

would

not

have

caused

these

. .

I '

17.

circumstances to differ very much. However that may be it seems

to us that a consideration of the basic laws

of physics of which

we are permitted to have knowledge would lead one

to a conclusion

that if the appellant's vehicle

were carrying a heavier load than

the	test vehicle and if they struck thelr respective trees at

approximately the same speed, the damage to the appellant's

vehicle should have been greater than the damage

to the test

vehicle. It seems

to us that the

difference

the

loads

carried by the two vehicles must have worked in the appellant's favour so that we may safely ignore that difference whatever It may have been.

In the event it seems to

us that the circumstances of

the two collisions were sufficiently similar to make the evidence

of the test results relevant.

The weight to be put

on that

evidence was of course a matter

for the jury.

As to the fire tests the

first two tended to show that

neither the amount

of petrol to be expected in the fuel lines nor

thls, together with the amount to be expected in the bowl of the carburettor, was likely to cause a fire in the engine compartment whlch would burst through the fire wall and engulf the interior

of the vehicle.

The

third test tended to show that even when

considerably more petrol than could have been

the engine

compartment was lit, it was unlikely to cause such a fire.

The

flnal test tended to show that only

with much more petrol still,

ignited in the engine compartment, would

a fire anything like the

18.

fire described by the appellant and revealed

by the state of the

vehicle, be caused. In

view of the expert evidence as to the

amount of

petrol which would

avallable

the

engine

compartment to feed a fire, it seems to

us, that evidence of the

fire tests was relevant to the issue as to whether

or not the

fire was caused in the manner

which the appellant told police it

was. Once again its weight

was a matter for the ]ury.

The evidence referred to in ground 7 was that of

Pound

and Professor Joubert. Pound said

that,

in his opinion, the

damage

the

front

of the

appellant's

car

evealed

photographs indicated the

collision with the tree at twelve to

fifteen

miles an hour.

Professor

Joubert

gave

it as his

opinion, after seeing photographs and film

of the appellant's

vehicle, that the collision	with	the tree took place at about
fifteen miles an hour.

was

argued

that

Cooper

(No. 2 ) (1975) 12

S.A.S.R. 151 is authority for the proposition that

an expert

witness may not be permitted to give evidence of his opinion

to the speed

of a motor vehicle on impact with another based on

the damage to the first vehicle.

The case does not decide this

but decides that an

insurance adjustor, formerly an

experienced

trafflc policeman, who had made

a study of traffic accidents and

thelr results, could not be accepted

as an

expert in

deducing

from the condition of

a damaged vehicle the speed

at which

collided with another vehicle. In the case at hand it must be

19.

observed that the collision

was with a stationary object and also

that Pound and Joubert possessed expert quallfications much

greater than Mr Swain, the adjustor in Cooper

v. && (supra).

Pound is, and has been for ten years,

a vehicle safety

engineer with General Motors-Holden, the manufacturer

of the

vehicle

questlon.

He holds

iplomas

mechanlcal

enqineerlng, electrical englneering and automotive engineering.

He has been lnvolved in what he called "impact testing" and

conducting tests at various speeds

of impacts of particular

models of Holden motor vehicles

with stationary objects. The

models lncluded the particular model

In question. It seems to

us that he is well yuallfied to express the opinion that he did.

Professor

Joubert

holds

the

chair

mechanical

engineering at the University of Melbourne. He

has degrees in

aeronautical engineering and mechanical engineering and is

Fellow of a

number of learned bodies, including the Society of

Automotive Engineers of Australia and the Australian Academy of Technological Science. For the last 25 years he has devoted

himself

almost

continuously

to the study

motor

vehicle

accidents.

He has, during this time, carried out a number of

partlcular

studies

including

one

funded

the

Commonwealth

Government into "road accidents

with fixed objects". Professor

Joubert seems to us

be well quallfied to give the opinions

20.

that he did.

Ground 7 in the notice of appeal must be rejected

and the appeal as a whole fails and

must be dlsmissed.

I certify that this and

the preceding pages are

a true copy of the Reasons

for Judgment ob The Court

[1986] FCA 404

9 Dec 1986