Perhaps I wasn’t clear enough.
If you are concerned about being sued, then don’t provide any advice/information. Concern over being sued would not seem to be a motivation for dozens of posts telling Stoid over and over again that she’s a fool for thinking that she could appeal without an attorney.
Nobody told Stoid she was a fool for thinking she could appeal without an attorney.
They only had to keep saying it over and over again because she continued to keep on not getting it. Any “emotional manner,” if in fact there was any, is probably due to frustration with her apparent thick-headedness, as well as being referred to as “arrogant asshats.” Would you consider that to be emotional? Perhaps the thread title had a bit to do with setting the tone of the thread, yes?
Noel Prosequi, how common is it for a case to go the High Court in Australia? Any idea how many cases they hear per year, on average? Will this be your appearance in the High Court?
According to its annual report of last year, the full bench of the Australian High Court hears about 70 matters a year. They process about 700 applications for special leave to appeal to the High Court per year. So assuming that they are not building up or eating into a backlog, they only grant leave about 10% of the time.
www.highcourt.gov.au
The court is rather clogged with immigration cases and self represented litigants as it happens. Have a look at their annual report if you want to learn more.
Princhester has the stats right in his answer - about 70 full appeals a year.
The High Court procedure here means that access is a little easier than it is in the US (not sure about Canada). In general (and there are important but uncommon exceptions), no-one has the right to appeal to the High Court - you have to get special leave, meaning you have to demonstrate, in general, that you have a very important point of law that is affects more than just your own little case. SCOTUS and other courts of ultimate appeal follow a similar principle. The difference here is that you get a special leave hearing before 2 judges where you get 20 minutes to argue that you should get through the front door to be one of the lucky 70 cases a year. If you get special leave, the High Court sets down a hearing proper before 5 or 7 judges where the actual outcome is determined. If you don’t get special leave, bad luck.
When you ask will this be “my” appearance, it will be a special leave application, which I predict with some confidence will lose. But I am not a High Court virgin, if that is what you are asking.
Princhester asked earlier about whether the “expert” in this case was the defendant. No, he wasn’t. The “expert” swanned in after the trial was all over attempting to be a white knight with “fresh evidence” (ie, his own opinion).
Coincidentally, Keane JA was on the court. I would dearly love to have that quote of his you referred to, Princhester.
I think it is implied in the proverb “a lawyer who represents himself has a fool for a client”.
She certainly can appeal without a lawyer, if that is what you mean. She will just probably lose, for all the reasons mentioned.
Regards,
Shodan
That’s actually one interesting aspect of this story - there’s more to come. Unless she decides to settle out of court, Stoid will either win or lose her case. If she wins, then it proves that she was OK without a lawyer after all, and those who harangued her will have to eat crow. If she loses, then either her version of the facts and judgment of the people involved is seriously skewed or she really messed up acting as her own lawyer.
Hopefully she’ll keep us posted.
To us, maybe, but to her it will just prove that the justice system is a mess and that her ex paid off the appellate judges.
One incident proves nothing, either way. even if it’s generally highly imprudent for her to act pro se, she may win; she may lose because the judge was bought off by the corrupt forces arrayed against her. Neither scenario is likely, but either is possible. Anecdote =/= data.
See, this sort of reasoning is a problem: it ignores the reality of actual court cases.
In reality, what having a good lawyer does is give you the best shot possible on your particular facts. There are cases that no lawyer in the world can win, just as there are cases very hard to lose; most fall somewhere in between.
Think of it mathematically. In a civil case the standard for winning is “balance of probabilities” - that is, the trier of fact (the judge most likely) has to believe you are 51% in the right. Now it may be the case that your facts are, at first glance, pretty evenly balanced. In that case a good lawyer can make all the difference - between 49% and 51%. However, it may be the case that the facts are really skewed one way or the other - if your case is at first glance only 5% correct, it may be very difficult fior even the most clever arguments to bring it up over that magic 51% level. Ditto, if you are at first glance 95% in the right, it is going to be difficult to screw up. That person may not need a lawyer at all.
But here’s the rub: without training, you may have no idea what facts are significant and if you are 95% in the right at first appearances or not; you are not in a position to safely evaluate your case. Most people believe they are 95% in the right, whether it is objectively true or not. If they are correct in that assessment, of course they need no lawyer - but it could easily be the case that in fact they are only 50% in the right, and desperately need a lawyer (or 5% in the right and no lawyer on earth can save them).
What a lawyer can do, is help them with a bit of objectivity. That is why so few cases actually go to trial. A client comes in who is only 5% in the right, a lawyer can say “based on my training, your case is unlikely to succeed at trial. Let’s work out a good settlement with the other side”.
An unrepresented person, having an uninformed (and usually much exaggerated) opinion of the merits of his or her case, is much more likely to take it to trial. They may win - it may be the fact that their case is 65, 75, or 95% correct - but this is likely to be purely fortuitous and not necessarily a reflection of their lawyerly skills (it may be, but it is very unlikely).
The reason most unrepresented persons lose at trial is not simply that they are not good lawyers, it is that they are much more likely to be taking cases to trial in the first place - cases that those advised by good lawyers would never see the inside of a courtroom. In a perfect world where people were reasonable and advised by good counsel, only those cases which were doubtful would go to court.
You are contradicting much of what various other lawyers have said in these threads. I was addressing the others (e.g. this post and any number of others like it). You personally won’t have to eat crow regardless. Neither will I. 
From your perspective, ISTM that the only real downsides for Stoid in acting as her own attorney are 1) that she may be wasting a lot of her time, and 2) that she may be passing up a chance to settle a case that she has no real chance of winning.
Not knowing how Stoid manages her time or what settlement offers might be available, I couldn’t know how much of a factor these things are.
At any rate, from what you are saying, the real problem is in initially assessing the strength of her case. Stoid has claimed (here and elsewhere) that lawyers have confirmed to her that her view of the case is correct. Assuming that this is true and not just her hearing things the way she wants to hear it, I assume you are behind her acting as her own attorney.
You’re missing at least one other alternative: Stoid has a decent shot at winning the case, but because she probably doesn’t understand the relevant case law or will miss the salient points of the law, will lose the case.
And, as has been stated multiple times in this very thread, lawyers are extremely hesitant to provide legal advice or direction without an attorney-client relationship. When Stoid says, “I’ve had just enough input from a few lawyers to keep me moving in the right direction, as well as confirming my view of the case and the judge”, we have no idea what, exactly, “just enough input” entails.
Finally, although there are the occasional outliers, the vast majority of cases are decided correctly. When someone says “the lopsided insanity of this thing is remarkable”, it makes me think there’s some aspect of the case that is wrong, without the plaintiff seeing it.
Stoid also indicated that the attorney she retained for the original trial opined that her case was more or less bulletproof, so she may not be getting advice from very good attorneys.
Not exactly … I’d look at it as follows:
A good lawyer can help you to assess your case and ensure you get the best possible result - which in many cases is to settle, where your case is weak;
In those cases which actually should go to court, because the case is arguable, a good lawyer is absolutely vital in court - they can make the difference between, say, 49% and 51% (or 40% and 60%).
Thus, it is only in those cases which are slam-dunk winners that having a lawyer isn’t all that important, because you would most probably win lawyer or not. If your case is a loser or arguable, you are better off with a lawyer.
I know nothing about Stoid’s case, other than that she is appealing a result. That means that another court has already looked at it and she has lost.
It is thus very unlikely that Stoid’s case is a “slam-dunk winner”; indeed, few appeal cases are, by nature the appellant has an uphill battle.
Therefore, logically speaking, Stoid ought to secure the services of a lawyer.
That’s certainly an alternative, but that was not the crux of Malthus’ post, which I was addressing.
Exactly. We have no idea. The only one who has an idea is Stoid herself. Therefore anyone else predicting any sort of outcome that is predicated on what “just enough input” entails is being presumptuous.
That’s very possible. There are thousands lunatics out there who sound exactly like Stoid. But uncommon things happen.
There are thousands of lunatics out there who think they are President of the US. Barak Obama is not one of them.
Stoid indicated that her original case was in fact “bulletproof” but that the judge was off the wall. The fact that a judge turns out to be off the wall doesn’t mean that the attorney who failed to anticipate this is a bad attorney. As Sauron observed, “the vast majority of cases are decided correctly”.
But even if you’re right, she might hire an attorney and get one just as bad as the other guys.
Been through that. She can’t afford a lawyer. Only remaining question is; on the basis of your logic, are you willing to predict that she will lose the appeal? 
Similar here in Canada. Our Court has been averaging around 85 cases a year, which is down a bit - ten years ago it used to be around 100 a year. The leave application is decided by a panel of three judges, but it’s entirely on paper, unless there are unusual circumstances which make it reasonable for the panel to hear oral argument on the leave app.
Yes, that was what I was curious about.
I would say the chances are more likely than not that she will lose, even knowing nothing about the case. A unrepresented appellant? Odds are very much against her.
Exactly- and the vast majority of people who go pro se are nuts. So, which do you think is more likely: that the judge decided the matter appropriately based on the merits of the parties’ respective cases, or that Stoid is a little off her rocker?
Bearing in mind, of course, that the judge has no personal interest in the case, while Stoid has a deeply personal interest in it, since the defendant (or now appellee) is her ex-husband (boyfriend?)
Let’s offer up an example of a case where, all things being equal, you’re 60% likely to win. The reason you need a lawyer is because, without one, you run a significant risk of turning that 60% into 40%. How can this come about? Let me just list a few ways straight off the top of my head
All of these are mundane things that have zippo to do with the merits of the case. There are hundreds more like it and can pop up at any time before, during or after a trial. The point is, if you don’t know what you’re doing you can easily lose both the trial itself and your right to appeal the trial even if it was a foregone conclusion that you had the stronger case going in.