Tuesday, 18 October 2005
According to the Sydney Morning Herald, this past year the High Court of Australia has upheld a record number of appeals from the New South Wales Court of Appeals:
Herald research shows that of 52 cases, 40 decisions of lower courts have been reversed – a success rate of almost 80 per cent.
Last year it upheld only 34 of 55, and in 2003 it was 33 of 56. Last year only 12 of 20 appeals against NSW decisions succeeded.
This means, of course, that in many cases the High Court has found that the trial judge decided the case correctly in the first instance — as was the case in Sony v Stephens, where the High Court agreed with Justice Sackville’s original finding that Eddy Stephens was not liable for having circumvented a technological protection measure.
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2 Responses to “Statistics on reversals by Australian High Court”
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October 19th, 2005 at 4:23 pm
Wonder how the statistics would look if you took into account how many applications for special leave were made?
Anyone else find it surprising that so many cases that special leave was granted didn’t result in the appeal being allowed?
Good luck with the new venture!
October 19th, 2005 at 5:24 pm
Is 20 per cent such a high figure of appeals being refused? After all, there are reasons other than ‘likely to overturn’ why the High Court could choose to take on a case:
– to reconsider the issue after a long time;
– to settle inconsistent authority between different courts;
– because they don’t mind the result, but don’t like the reasoning of the court below.
And then, of course, there are the simple mistakes (oops, shouldn’t have taken that one).
I’d want to know more about the 20 per cent before I drew any conclusions.