Stopping him using the Court to perpetuate abuse

Gina and her young child fled a violent relationship and escaped interstate, but her former husband would not let her go. He sued her after he had been charged with (and later convicted for) assaulting Gina and possessing an unauthorised firearm.  The former husband pleaded in his Statement of Claim that Gina’s actions in reporting him to police somehow breached “contractual obligations” and “were beyond all bounds of decency”.

It was impossible to see the legal basis for any claim, but the former husband persisted, using the Court case to threaten and intimidate his ex-wife. Over the course of our seven months of acting for Gina, we appeared in Court at four hearings, before three separate magistrates and registrars. The Plaintiff failed to attend at any of them, and made multiple requests for adjournments (including on one occasion providing a doctor’s certificate which said that the Plaintiff could not attend due to his concerns about the colour of his urine).

Over this time, the former husband failed to comply with Court orders to file an Amended Statement of Claim, failed to respond to our requests to particularise the basis of the claim, brought an application to try to stay his own case, attempted to file a summons in the Court of Appeal, and then commenced parallel proceedings in the same Local Court arising out of the same set of facts, but this time alleging a "tortious conspiracy" to inflict intentional emotional distress, while still purporting to pursue the original claim as well. Eventually, the Court dismissed both cases for want of prosecution.

We can only begin to imagine how confusing and distressing this legal labyrinth was for our client, in the face of a violent ex-partner trying to sue her in Court for unspecified damages.  What we can understand immediately, is how much worse things would have been without legal representation. The one virtue for Gina throughout this year was that she had lawyers who could deal directly with her former husband’s madness instead of Gina having to respond to him herself, and who could spell out calmly and clearly to the Court why these proceedings were a nonsense. Pro bono representation can make such an enormous difference to people’s lives.