What’s in a name? Plenty if you ask the two footwear companies engaged in a David vs Goliath legal battle over the name ‘Ugg’. One of the businesses heading to court in the United States is a small Sydney manufacturing company that has been making Ugg boots since the early 1990s. It’s opponent is giant… Read more »
While most categories of crime in NSW have fallen, our state has experienced a significant rise in fraud cases. Statistics published by the NSW Bureau of Crime and Statistics and Research (BOCSAR) suggest that the total number of fraud offences in 2013 and 2014 was 98,647, up 7.5% on the previous 24 month period. Definition… Read more »
This month marks the 9th Anniversary of the disappearance of Madeleine McCann. It also coincides with an announcement by Scotland Yard that it is pursuing one final lead, and unless more evidence comes to light, it will prepare to wind up the investigation into how the little girl vanished from a Portuguese resort in 2007…. Read more »
Every now and again, a story turns up in the media you just couldn’t make up, no matter how hard you tried. This one involves an Illawarra woman who allegedly stole the prosecutor’s handbag from Wollongong District Courthouse, in full view of CCTV, only moments after she conducted an ‘award winning performance’ to convince the… Read more »
A recent Commonwealth case has provided some guidance on meeting stringent bail tests in serious cases. The applicant, a 16-year-old boy known as ‘NK’, was charged under section 102.6 of the Criminal Code Act (Cwth) with ‘funding a terrorist organisation’; an offence which carries a maximum penalty of 25 years imprisonment and triggers a “rebuttal… Read more »
A lab technician working at a New Jersey State Police drug testing unit has been caught fabricating DNA test results, which has cast a shadow over the reliability of 8,000 criminal convictions. Mr Kamalkant Shah was discovered to have recorded results about a suspected marijuana sample before it was analysed, a technique known as ‘dry-labbing’…. Read more »
If a person under the age of 18 is guilty of a criminal offence in NSW, there are a range of different penalties that can apply. For children, there is a greater emphasis on the need for rehabilitation – and greater scope for matters to be dealt with outside the courtroom altogether. Although there are… Read more »
The offence of drug driving, unlike drink driving, does not require you to have a certain level of drugs in your system at the time of driving – any amount is enough. This means that even drugs taken days ago, which no longer have any effect on your driving ability, could still see you being… Read more »
The NSW Court of Criminal Appeal (NSWCCA) is the highest criminal court in the state. It is presided over by a panel of three Supreme Court Justices (or five in some cases), and hears appeals from the District and Supreme Courts of NSW. Defendants who have been sentenced can appeal to the NSWCCA if they… Read more »
New South Wales District Court judge Clive Jeffreys made headlines recently, criticised for being too lenient. One newspaper’s headline read “Judged Inadequate” while another’s said “Fails of Justice”. Judge Jeffreys, appointed to the bench in 2011, has faced attacks not only from the media, but also from a Senior NSW Government MP. Andrew Constance, the… Read more »
