According to people who work in the West Australian legal system, the system is:

• Dysfunctional, extremely expensive, slow, broken and highly politicised
• In comparison to NSW and Victoria, WA has no justice review commission to monitor the performance of the courts and the performance of individual  judges.
• At least one Australian High Court judge refers to WA as the "Wild West"

• Appointments to the bench in WA are weighted too much towards to who you know and not what you know.
• As a personal injury claimant you are not permitted to sit with your legal team, you are forced to sit in the public gallery. You are therefore unable to assist your legal team or participate in your own case.
• I was instructed by my team to show no emotions whatsoever while seated in the public gallery, no facial expressions, even when lies or nonsense are being said. This is because the judge, can and will hold it against you.

• While giving your testimony you are not to argue your case, you are only to answer questions even if these are nonsense.
• Never go looking for the truth in a WA court, the truth is an inconvenient bystander which has no role to play. Evidence that supports your claim will be withheld, lies will be put forward about you and your motives. Wild and unsupported accusations will be made against you without requiring substantiating evidence.
• If a judge with no experience in personal injury law hears your case you will most probably be out of luck.

• Lawyers and barristers that take on personal injury cases are regarded by they rest of the profession as 'bottom feeders'.
• My appeal before the WA Supreme Court was heard by three judges with a background in commercial/corporate law. I am told commercial/corporate lawyers consider themselves as royalty in their profession.
• Lawyers and barristers like to address each other as "learned friends" and "colleagues". In truth, they have egos the size of skyscrapers facing each other off. Winning at any cost is more important than the truth or the law.

• Judges are in too many cases, primadonnas and the lawyers and barristers appearing before them live in fear of their power. One young solicitor actually committed suicide as a result of a dressing down she received from a judge. The responsible judge never had to face any consequences for her inappropriate actions and comments.
• I had to replace one of my barristers, Kevin Pratt, after a very nasty verbal altercation with ICWA's new barrister John Staude, now District Court Judge John Staude. The latter called my barrister Kevin Pratt unprofessional  and he retaliated by accusing John Staude of in future giving him nothing but grief if and when he was going to have to appear before John Staude, once he had taken up the position as a DC judge. It was obvious that the atmosphere was so poisoned between the two that one had to go. Even the Chief Registrar of the District Court had trouble getting the two to settle down.  The outcome of this personal bickering left me with the cost as the pretrat was left was nothing but costs for me to pay, as you the client get to pay for the altercation and resulting failure of the pretrial conference.

• Some judges unfortunately put there own values above those of the law. My judge came from a background in legal aid, family and children's law and for her anybody earning over the minimum wage or pursuing a multi million dollar claim, was a scab on society. But she was more than happy to take home a $300.000+ wage herself, a government car and a fully tax payer funded pension for the rest of her life (after only ten years service) resulting into a 60% of her last wage. How many of us mere mortals would like to retire at 60 with a $200.000+ per year pension. Judges don't seem to have heard that today we have a compulsory superannuation system in Australia which they themselves have to contribute to. Any super contributions he or she has made in their previous careers don't come into the equation and are simply the icing on the cake! These very very generous and unfunded pension arrangements for judges come at a very high cost to the taxpayer as they are paid from general revenue (your income tax). In the case of the Federal Government, which is responsible for judges sitting on the Federal, Supreme  and High Court, the Federal Government's pension liabilities for 102 active and 180 retired judges (Total 282 judges) have now reached $837.000.000 as per 30 June 2011 (approximately $3.000.000 for every judge at federal level). Eventhough Superannuation is now compulsory for all working Australians, and it is us paying the contributions, no change has ever been made to the retirement arrangements of judges. Judges don't pay any contributions and the benefits are fully taxpayer funded! In the case of District Court Judge Kate O'Brien who retired at age 61 and who can statistically expect to live at least another 20 years (tendency rising), her pension benefits are going to cost the taxpayer over $4.000.000 in today's money to age 81. If she lives longer the total cost will rise with every passing year. Furthermore, cost of living increases will raise this amount considerably. The  requirement for a judge to serve 10 years to become entitled to these very very generous pension benefits is actually a major obstacle in any attempt to remove a judge from office, for whatever reason. Unless he or she has been caught in some form of criminal activity the judge will be allowed to serve his or her 10 years before being discreetly sent into retirement. Remember, in WA their is no Judicial Review Commission as in the Eastern States!

• After the legal process had ended I was able to discover that the trial judge had made a fundamental error in interpreting the psychiatric evidence presented to her. In her judgment, Kate O'Brien had accepted that I suffered from the diagnosed Chronic Adjustment Disorder. She disputed, however, that the motor vehicle accident was the stressor that caused the disease. The judge furthermore conceded that I had not suffered from any mental illness before the MVA.

The mistake that Kate O'Brien made,was that for a person to be diagnosed with an Adjustment Disorder or Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (as diagnosed by ICWA's psychiatrist Dr. Peter McCarthy) there MUST be  an identifiable stressor to allow the diagnosis. Therefore, for judge Kate O'Brien to be able to disregard the MVA as the stressor she would have had to firstly identify an alternative stressor. However, neither the judge Kate O'Brien nor ICWA's legal team were able to identify such an alternative stressor. The MVA was left as the only available identifiable stressor causing the illness and the judge's decision to ignore it and not apply the mandatory diagnostic criteria of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders Fourth Edition(DSM-IV) nullifies her key argument for not granting me and my family compensation.

The judge had actually included the above mentioned diagnostic requirement in her judgment but did not apply it. The diagnostic requirement of all forms of mental disorders are published in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders Fourth Edition (DSM-IV). This requirement was furthermore confirmed to me by my psychiatrist Dr. Lawrence Blumberg. Although I wrote to the Chief Judge of the District his answer basically says: "You had your trial that's it", and refused to enter into the matter further.

This highlights once more two fundamental problems in the West Australian Judicial System;

1) The Western Australia has no Judicial Review Commission to monitor the performance of the courts and individual judges.

2) A judge must often assess and judge a very broad body of evidence  (in my case medical as well as aviation information) for which the judge is not qualified and does not have the necessary support to understand such complex and specific evidence.   

• As the judge found that I was a "unreliable historian" who had obtained referrals to doctors by deceit and had falsified symptoms when speaking to psychiatrists, she said that I made a fraudulent claim against the Insurance Commission of WA. The Insurance Commission, however, has expressly refused to pursue me in court for making such fraudulent claim. ICWA has even stated that they are not going to pursue me for their costs in defending themselves against my claim. The reason is simple; if they did pursue me through the courts ALL evidence they had withheld from the trial would become admissible and they would lose instantly. If you wish to read where the judge made serious errors, read her decision which includes my comments and which my lawyers agreed with or this extract with a few good examples! It will make you wonder if she was just simply biased, plain stupid or a combination of both. She had previously become untenable as Chief Justice of the WA Childrens' Court and was moved to the District Court to enable her to attain her ten years' service as a judge and thereby entitling her to a fully taxpayer funded life long annuity/pension.

District Court:

• District Court Judgment with Comments
• Complete Transcript of District Court Trial
• First letter to the Chief Judge of the District Court
• Second letter to the Chief Judge of the District Court
• First reply from the Chief Judge of the District Court
• Third letter to the Chief Judge of the District Court
• Second reply from the Chief Judge of the District Court

Supreme Court:

• Supreme Court Decision
• Letter to the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court
• First reply from the Chief Justice
• Second letter to the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court
• Second reply from the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court
• Third letter to the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court

Lawyers:

• Cost Disclosure Statement
• Cost Disclosure Statement

UPDATED  7 June 2017 ML