A Barrister's Blog

Q: Why did the pharmacist get charged with 6 counts under the Poisons Act 1964 (WA)?

A: Because he didn’t maintain a register for scheduled drugs and didn’t keep those drugs locked in a safe.

You might think that fixing up your systems, admitting your mistake and generally getting “on with it” would be the way to. Not so for Mr Nyoni, who decided to launch multiple proceedings in various forums including the WA administrative decisions tribunal, the Supreme Court of WA as well as in the Federal Court. The Federal Court proceedings personally named several judges, government departments and others as respondents.

You know that your appeal is running into a few difficulties when the Court says your first argument: “is contrary to the historical origins of the prerogative writs, hundreds of years of case law and authority that binds this Court” (and then launches into some references to the reign of Henry III and following it through to the 16th century).  But it gets even worse when:

“Despite all of this, Mr Nyoni submits that this Court has jurisdiction (not by way of an appeal regularly brought) to review decisions made by its judges, that Bird v Free was wrongly decided and this Court is not bound to follow the subsequent endorsement of that decision by several justices of the High Court in Re Jarman. Self-evidently that submission must be rejected….”

You can read this episode of the ongoing saga (and references to previous episodes you missed) in Nyoni v Bird [2022] FCAFC 61 

Creative commons acknowledgment for the photograph.