His Honour Judge Stephen Walmsley SC

Stephen Walmsley SC was sworn in as a judge of the District Court of New South Wales in August 2001. His Honour was born in Sydney and educated in the public school system in Yass. He later attended Canberra Grammar School and the Australian National University. His Honour practised as a solicitor at Messrs. Allen Allen & Hemsley and then as a partner in Macphillamy Cummins & Gibson, solicitors in Canberra. He also tutored and lectured in the Law Faculty and legal Workshop of the ANU. His Honour was called to the Bar in Canberra in 198l and practised there until returning to Sydney in 1988.

His Honour played a large part in the life of the Canberra legal profession as a solicitor and barrister, becoming a member of the Bar Council and one of two directors of the chambers in the Territory. As well as being a highly respected and fearless advocate, His Honour gave generously of his time and skills to assist the Bar Association and the junior Bar. He served on the Supreme Court Common Law Users Committee and was the Bar's representative on the working party on medical negligence established by the Minister for Health. He also assisted ex-officio in the work of the Common Law Committee as well as serving on the Professional Conduct and Education Committees and assisting the advocacy training programme, including training aspiring advocates at the fledgling bars of Bangladesh and Tonga.

After some gratuitous references to His Honour's taste in jackets and ties, Katzmann SC, speaking on behalf of the Bar, recalled two of his Honour's more interesting cases in the following terms: 

Some of your Honour's cases have been as colourful as your Honour's Jackets. The most obvious example is Fasold v Roberts, the so-called Noah's Ark case, where your Honour appeared for the applicants seeking various remedies for allegedly misleading and deceptive conduct and for breach of copyright arising out of some public statements about the supposed site of the remnants of Noah's Ark. My favourite, however, is a recent appeal case in which your Honour appeared for a man who felt that his work injury, which caused him to fracture his hip, was a punishment from God. for his peculiar sexual practices involving as they did a menage a trois with his wife and the family dog.

 

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