Practice and procedure: Supreme court act 1995 (QLD) s 253 - leave to appeal cost orders

The recent decision of the Court of Appeal in AGL Sales (Qld) Pty Ltd v Dawson Sales Pty Ltd [2009] QCA 262 provides clear direction on the Court’s expectations of a party seeking leave to appeal a costs order.This decision is likely to impact upon common practice in relation to appeals against costs orders. It sends a clear message to trial judges that they should not give leave as of course when giving a judgment in relation to costs, and that parties seeking leave under s 253 of the Supreme Court Act 1995 (Qld) should make a separate application. The application should be supported by material presenting an arguable case that the trial judge made an error in the exercise of the discretion of the kind described in House v King (1936) 55 CLR 499. A different, and interesting, aspect of this appeal is that it was the first wholly electronic civil appeal. The court-provided technology had been adopted at trial, and the Court of Appeal dispensed with any requirement for hard copy appeal record books

Practice and procedure: Federal Court Rules O23 r 11 - offers of compromise - offer for dismissal of claim and to forego recovery of costs

In Uniline Australia Ltd ACN 010752057 v S Briggs Pty Ltd ACN 007415518 (No 2) [2009] FCA 920 Greenwood J considered a number of principles guiding the exercise of discretion in relation to costs, particularly when offers of compromise have been made under the formal process provided by the Federal Court Rules

Court-provided trial technology: efficiency and fairness for criminal trials

In Australia, trials conducted as 'electronic trials' have ordinarily run with the assistance of commercial service providers, with the associated costs being borne by the parties. However, an innovative approach has been taken by the courts in Queensland. In October 2007 Queensland became the first Australian jurisdiction to develop its own court-provided technology, to facilitate the conduct of an electronic trial. This technology was first used in the conduct of civil trials. The use of the technology in the civil sphere highlighted its benefits and, more significantly, demonstrated the potential to achieve much greater efficiencies. The Queensland courts have now gone further, using the court-provided technology in the high proffle criminal trial of R v Hargraves, Hargraves and Stoten, in which the three accused were tried for conspiracy to defraud the Commonwealth of Australia of about $3.7 million in tax. This paper explains the technology employed in this case and reports on the perspectives of all of the participants in the process. The representatives for all parties involved in this trial acknowledged, without reservation, that the use of the technology at trial produced considerable overall efficiencies and costs savings. The experience in this trial also demonstrates that the benefits of trial technology for the criminal justice process are greater than those for civil litigation. It shows that, when skilfully employed, trial technology presents opportunities to enhance the fairness of trials for accused persons. The paper urges governments, courts and the judiciary in all jurisdictions to continue their efforts to promote change, and to introduce mechanisms to facilitate more broadly a shift from the entrenched paper-based approach to both criminal and civil procedure to one which embraces more broadly the enormous benefits trial technology has to offer

Practice and procedure: UCPR 229 - defamation proceedings - damages to be assessed

In Hogan v Ellery [2009] QDC 154 McGill DCJ considered two applications for leave to deliver interrogatories under r 229 of the Uniform Civil Procedure Rules 1999 (Qld) (UCPR). The judgment provides useful analysis of the circumstances in which a plaintiff may obtain leave to deliver interrogatories to a defendant in defamation proceedings, and also to a non-party before action

New challenges for litigation in the electronic age

Australian Courts are already dealing with issues around electronic documents and technology in the pre-trial and trial stages of litigation, in particular in cases involving large volumes of documentation. However, issues surrounding the ease with which such documents can be disseminated have troubled the courts. The adoption of new technology is gathering pace, but the courts are proceeding with caution

Effects of Threat-Related Emotional Information in a Lexical Decision Task: Examination of Cognitive and Motor Performance.

Recently, attention has been given to the cognitive processing of aversive emotional, or threat-related, information. Although investigations have often focused on anxiety disordered individuals, it is suggested that examination of normal individuals with varying levels of anxiety will increase the understanding of the cognitive processing of aversive emotional, or threat-related, information. It has been hypothesized that high anxious individuals exhibit an attentional bias toward threat-related emotional information. The response of low anxious individuals to threat-related information is unclear. Some evidence suggests that non-anxiety disordered individuals employ a mechanism that inhibits or interferes with the processing of threat-related, emotional information. The current study examines the cognitive processing of aversive emotional, or threat-related, information using a lexical decision task (LDT). The LDT, which requires subjects to decide if a letter string is or is not a word, has examined cognitive processing of nonemotional information as well as aversive emotional, or threat-related, information. In the current study, 94 subjects with differing anxiety levels, indexed by the STAI, responded to a computer-driven LDT. The LDT included 384 trials consisting of an attention capturing plus (+) sign followed by a prime word which was replaced by a target letter string. Subjects indicated whether the target letter string represented a word in the English language by pressing keys on a computer keyboard. The design of the study involved a 2 x 4 within-subjects variation of target word emotionality (emotional, nonemotional), and the relationship between the prime and target words (emotional prime unrelated to target (e.g. STUPID-BEATEN), nonemotional prime unrelated to target (e.g. CRADLE-BEATEN), prime related to target (e.g. ABUSED-BEATEN), and prime identical to target (e.g. BEATEN-BEATEN)). Word length and familiarity were matched between categories. Emotionality of words and semantic relatedness was determined by pilot subjects. Results indicated general support for the existence of a mechanism that appears to compete, inhibit, or interfere with the processing of emotional information. High and low anxious individuals exhibited differential patterns of the hypothesized inhibition. Results also indicated greater interference of processing social threat in comparison to physical threat or nonemotional targets

“The power of Twitter”: using social media at a conference with nursing students

The potential impact of social media use in nursing education, continuing professional development, and nurses' advocacy is unfolding at a rapid pace. Nurse educators are uniquely placed to incorporate the use of social media to enhance students' learning experiences and support students to develop competency in the use of social media for patient benefit. This paper outlines a novel way in which professional education on social media use was integrated into an undergraduate nursing programme. Digital professionalism was cultivated together with collaborative active learning. Students connected using the Twitter hashtag #kclciat18 registered for the ‘Connecting it all Together 2017’ conference held at the Florence Nightingale Faculty of Nursing, Midwifery & Palliative Care, King's College London. Students were invited to participate in an education session on social media, and live activities using Twitter. The conference provided students with a forum to learn about Twitter and practice using Twitter in a professional capacity. Utilising the healthcare conference hashtag repository, Symplur, quantitative and qualitative measures were accessible indicating the reach and extent of connectivity. A combination of qualitative and quantitative outcome measures will help student nurses appreciate the power of Twitter for patient benefit

Care Labeling of Carpets and Rugs: Availability and Use by Selected Carpet Dealers and Homemakers in Stillwater, Oklahoma

Housing and Interior Dat