Young v Crime and Corruption Commission
[2020] QCA 237
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- Unreported Judgment
- Young v Crime and Corruption Commission[2020] QCA 237
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Young v Crime and Corruption Commission[2020] QCA 237
Young v Crime and Corruption Commission[2020] QCA 237
[2020] QCA 237
COURT OF APPEAL
FRASER JA
Appeal No 1461 of 2018
SC No 12210 of 2017
GREGORY RAYMOND YOUNG Applicant
v
CRIME AND CORRUPTION COMMISSION Respondent
BRISBANE
FRIDAY, 30 OCTOBER 2020
JUDGMENT
FRASER JA: On 13 September 2019, the Court dismissed an appeal by G R Young against a decision made in the Trial Division striking out Mr Young’s claim and amended statement of claim for damages against the Crime and Corruption Commission. The Court referred to Mr Young’s misapprehension underlying his claim that he had any personal rights of action of the kinds he claimed. It was held that Mr Young’s various claims for damages were bound to fail and were rightly struck out. The Court agreed with the primary judge’s description of the non-compliances of Mr Young’s pleading with the Uniform Civil Procedure Rules as involving “a continuous repetition of irrelevant unsupportable and scandalous claims”. The Court also agreed with the primary judge’s conclusion that there was “no basis for any of the claims made by the plaintiff and it would be inappropriate to expose the defendant to a further claim based upon the assertions which are contained in the current pleading”.
On 4 September 2020, Mr Young filed an application under the Uniform Civil Procedure Rules, r 668(1)(b), for orders that would vary the result of his appeal in his favour. Rule 668(1)(b) empowers the Court to stay enforcement of an order against a person or give other appropriate relief if “facts are discovered after an order is made that, if discovered in time, would have entitled the person against whom the order is made to an order or decision in the person’s favour or to a different order”.
On 18 September 2020 McMurdo JA ordered that Mr Young’s application be dismissed. Upon application by the Commission McMurdo JA ordered that Mr Young was not to file any further application in this Court in this appeal without the leave of a judge of the Court.
In an application dated 24 September 2020 Mr Young sought an order granting him leave to file “a further and final Application” in the appeal. In addition to two affidavits upon which Mr Young had relied at the hearing before McMurdo JA, he sought to rely upon a third affidavit. Mr Young sent various emails to the Registry in which he proposed variations to what he had previously called his “final Application” in the appeal. He articulated arguments in support of his proposals. Subsequently he supplied an unsworn fourth affidavit. It attached a revised draft application purportedly pursuant to Practice Direction 3 of 2013 and r 668(1)(b) and a statement of what were said to be the grounds for filing the proposed application. Although Mr Young described that revised form of application as his “preferred” application and his fourth affidavit as “the pinnacle of my case”, he subsequently supplied different versions of both of them.
At the hearing today, Mr Young handed up a further version. It includes an application to the Court of Appeal, together with a proposed fourth and fifth affidavit. The essence of what Mr Young seeks in his various proposed applications, and in his sworn and unsworn affidavits and arguments, is an injunction against the Commission, or one or more of its officers, requiring a referral to the Minister for Local Government, or an order by the Supreme Court itself referring to the Minister, for resolution by the Minister pursuant to ss 120 and 121 of the Local Government Act 2009 (Qld) of a complaint the applicant lodged with the Commission after the appeal was concluded. Alternatively, what Mr Young seeks may be described, as he describes it, as an order to enforce, rather than to reopen, findings made by the Court of Appeal in its judgment.
I should say at once about that alternative basis, that it is, with respect to Mr Young, misconceived. Findings in a Court’s reasons for judgment are not orders that are susceptible of enforcement. Nor, contrary to what may perhaps be Mr Young’s understanding, did the Court make findings that the local government whose conduct Mr Young trenchantly criticises, or its chief executive officer, was guilty of any particular wrongdoing. What Mr Young describes as findings are no more than restatements of statutory definitions.
The only contention by Mr Young that, if it were accepted, conceivably might justify the Court in sanctioning any departure from the finality of the order dismissing his appeal is that such a departure is authorised by r 668(1)(b) of Uniform Civil Procedure Rules. The same is true in relation to Mr Young’s application for an alteration in the costs orders made against Mr Young in his litigation. Those orders, too, could not be varied without some source of power such as r 668(1)(b) for the Court to make an order at odds with the final order dismissing his appeal and ordering costs against him.
Mr Young’s present application is based in part on his contention that after the dismissal of his appeal he discovered that, so he argues, ss 120 and 121 of the Local Government Act empower the Minister for Local Government to inquire into and resolve his various claims that he was the victim of serious crimes allegedly committed by a local government in respect of which he had sought damages in the claim that was struck out.
An application upon that basis cannot succeed, essentially for the reasons given by McMurdo JA for dismissing Mr Young’s first application under r 668(1)(b). As McMurdo JA considered, that application was in truth not based upon newly discovered facts, but upon legal arguments which McMurdo JA assumed in Mr Young’s favour were not presented during his appeal. Whilst in that sense Mr Young might have discovered things that were unknown to him when the Court made an order to dismiss his appeal and to order costs against him, it was clear beyond doubt that Mr Young did not identify any newly discovered fact so as to engage the operation of r 668.
In relation to the present application, the only other potential candidate for a new fact appears to be a complaint lodged with the Commission by Mr Young and the Commission’s failure to act upon that complaint which was made months after the Court of Appeal dismissed his appeal. It appears to have been first made in July 2020, and a similar complaint may have been subsequently made as well. Rule 668(1)(b) applies, however, only where an applicant discovers facts that existed before but were discovered after the making of the order or decision in relation to which the applicant seeks relief.
The proposed applications relying upon r 668(1)(b) which Mr Young seeks leave to bring are misconceived because of the absence of proof of any pre-existing but newly discovered fact.
There are other grounds upon which Mr Young’s application for leave should be refused.
First, the order dismissing his appeal, like the order made in the Trial Division striking out his statement of claim and claim, was based upon the absence of an arguable cause of action for the pleaded claims and the procedural history of the claim. The material supplied to the Court provides no reason for thinking that the grounds for those orders would be falsified or even weakened by the discovery or emergence after dismissal of the appeal of a factual basis for orders of the very different kind Mr Young now wishes to seek. Mr Young should not be granted leave to bring his proposed application in circumstances in which he has not identified or supplied evidence of any fact, the discovery or arising of which might entitle him to have the order dismissing his appeal set aside under either paragraph of r 668(1).
Secondly, the factual and legal bases for orders of the kind Mr Young now wishes to seek, in effect referring the substance of his complaint, whether in a complaint to the Commission or in his affidavit, to the Minister for resolution pursuant to ss 120 and 121 of the Local Government Act, were not litigated in the Trial Division or in the appeal.
Thirdly, those sections empower the Minister to suspend or revoke certain decisions of the local government, the term “decision” being defined to include a resolution, an order to give effect to a resolution, or a planning scheme. The complaint which the applicant seeks to have referred to the Minister does not identify a decision of the local government falling within that definition. Nor do the sections upon which Mr Young relies confer power upon the Court of Appeal to require the Minister to conduct an inquiry or make a determination of the kind Mr Young contemplates. Furthermore, Mr Young’s assertions about the conduct of the local government, which he has made repeatedly and with evident sincerity, do no form a sound factual basis upon which any of the orders he wishes to seek might be made.
Fourthly, other discretionary considerations are opposed to the grant of leave. This is the second application by which Mr Young seeks to reopen his appeal. It is brought long after the appeal was finalised. Mr Young has repeatedly foreshadowed changes to his proposed application. He has presented lengthy, repetitive, and diffuse arguments. He has made scandalous claims without supporting proof. The applications he proposes could not be resolved without a further hearing in which the Commission and the Minister would be entitled to appear, adduce evidence, and argue against the proposed orders.
One other matter should be mentioned. Some of Mr Young’s arguments suggest that McMurdo JA erred in refusing Mr Young’s first application. That application is not before me and I do not have jurisdiction to review McMurdo JA’s decision, but it will be apparent that I have not accepted such of the arguments put to McMurdo JA by Mr Young as he repeated in this application.
I order that Mr Young’s application filed on 24 September 2020 be dismissed. It appears to me that the Commission has likely not incurred much in the way of costs in dealing with that application, but they may have incurred some costs. The Commission were not required to appear today, and they are not present. Nor has the Commission asked the Court to make an order for its costs, so far as I am aware. In these circumstances, I do not propose today to make any order requiring Mr Young to pay the Commission’s costs of the application. If the Commission seeks such an order, no doubt it will apply for it in due course. Naturally I do not encourage or discourage it.