Colbert (a pseudonym) v Trustees of the Christian Brothers [2024] VSC 309 (link to Austlii).
With thanks to Angela Di Carluccio for drawing attention to this recent decision of the Supreme Court of Victoria.
The Plaintiff claimed in respect of alleged physical and sexual abuse at St Paul’s Technical College, Ballarat, in the period 1952 to 1955, The alleged perpetrators and many others were now deceased. There had been no complaint by the plaintiff prior to the death of either alleged perpetrator or until many years later.
The defendant applied seeking a permanent stay of the proceeding as an abuse of process.
The decision is quite detailed, however it is noteworthy at [170] that the trial judge commented that GLJ has changed the applicable principles – as the majority stated, it is a ‘new world’ – and there will be trials that must now proceed which would once have been regarded as unfair. The court ultimately refused the defendant’s application, noting at [173]:
In that sense, whatever might be said about cases in other contexts, the effect of delay upon the present case does not mean that a trial would be unfair or present as ‘no more than an informal enactment of the process of hearing and determining the plaintiff’s claim’. Indeed, for the reasons which I have sought to explain, there would be meaningful points available to the defendant as well as the prospect of a real contest in which it could not presently be said that either party would necessarily prevail.
[BillMaddensWordpress #2266]