AT CANBERRA ON THURSDAY, 11 MARCH 1993, AT 10.32 AM
Copyright in the High Court of Australia MR M.E. SPAUTZ, in person: Your Honours, I am representing
myself, as you probably know.
MR B. R. MCCLINTOCK: If the Court pleases, I appear for the
respondent who, of course, were the appellants in
the original appeal.
(instructed by Minter Ellison
Morris Fletcher)
MASON CJ: Yes, Dr Spautz.
MR SPAUTZ:
Your Honours, I will make this short because I do not think it is necessary to take up any more of
the Court's time.
I just wanted to formally
present, if it has not already been done, the
notice of motion accompanied by the affidavit,
which were filed on 1 October last year and, in
particular, I would like to rely upon the facts and
arguments contained in the affidavit including the
schedule thereto, which lists all of the cases upon
which I am relying plus a few other authorities,
including the Judiciary Act.
MASON CJ:
Dr Spautz, you are aware, are you not, that it is only in the most exceptional circumstances that the Court exercises a jurisdiction to vacate an order
which it has made.
MR SPAUTZ:
I can understand that readily, Your Honour.
In
fact I know of only two cases where there were
applications made to do so and they were
unsuccessful, so it follows that it must be
exceptional.
MASON CJ:
And the other point is that the jurisdiction is
never exercised in circumstances where the
applicant seeks to put before the Court an argument
which, either deliberately or through inadvertence, was not placed before the Court at the hearing which gave rise to the judgment.
MR SPAUTZ:
I can understand that too, Your Honour, but my
point and argument is that, in fact, all of these
authorities and arguments were in front of the
Court in the context of a notice of contention and
the lists of authorities to be relied upon to
support that notice.
MASON CJ: Yes.
But you are aware also that arguments are
presented, according to our tradition, orally. The notice of contention does no more than identify the
grounds which will or may be raised by oral
argument in support of the notice of contention.
The point is that your counsel did not actually put
to the Court the specific points that are in the
notice of contention, although it can be said that in the general submissions which your counsel made
Williams(2)
2
11/3/93
to the Court the broad strand, represented by some
of these points, was put to the Court.
MR SPAUTZ:
Yes, Your Honour. Besides that I think it…
Details
AGLC
Williams & Ors v Spautz [1993] HCATrans 56
Case
[1993] HCATrans 56
Decision Date
CaseChat Overview and Summary
The parties before the High Court of Australia were Allan Agipiotis Morris (the respondent/appellants) and Michael Edward Spautz (the applicant). Mr Spautz sought to have an order previously made by the High Court vacated.
The central legal issue before the Court was whether it should exercise its jurisdiction to vacate an order it had already made. This jurisdiction is typically exercised only in the most exceptional circumstances, and crucially, not where the applicant seeks to introduce arguments that were deliberately or inadvertently not put before the Court at the original hearing.
The Chief Justice, Mason CJ, indicated that the Court's tradition is for arguments to be presented orally, and that a notice of contention merely identifies grounds for oral argument. He noted that while the broad strand of some of the applicant's points may have been presented, the specific points in the notice of contention were not explicitly argued orally by counsel. Mr Spautz contended that his counsel may have been led to believe that oral argument on these specific points was unnecessary due to the written submissions and authorities already provided, and that insufficient time was allocated to present the full case.