Life | Alistair Lattimore

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Federal Court Observations

Thursday, February 11th, 2010

For the last few months, Mantra Group have been involved in a court case against a number of different businesses and individuals which revolved around trade mark infringement and breaches of the Trade Practices Act by off site letting agents - specifically those relating to Circle on Cavill.

Due to my familiarity with what was going on, I was asked if I would be willing to provide an affidavit for the court case – which I was more than happy to do. That also meant that it was possible that I might be needed when the trial date arrived, however at the time of submitting the affidavit – that wasn’t really on my radar.

A few days before the court case was to go before the Federal Court judge in Brisbane, I was notified that I would in fact be needed during the case as a witness and would be cross examined by the party Mantra Group were up against. I’m not the sort of person that tends to get too nervous but as soon as I found out, I had butterflies in my stomach and was excited and scared by the proposition of giving evidence in a court case of this magnitude.

I arrived in Brisbane much earlier than I needed to, not that it was my intention – I simply allowed enough time in case I got hit by poor traffic from the Gold Coast to Brisbane. Just in case, I took along Always Be Testing to pass the time – turned out to be a good decision. By about 9:30AM all of the official parties started to arrive and there was lots of preparation happening within the court room – making sure the literal volumes of evidence were in order and accounted for. Legal teams have bookcases on wheels to move all of their evidence and paper work around, which they appear to prefer over builders wheelbarrow – though they carry considerably less. The first session went from around 10:00AM until 1:00PM, at which point we broke for lunch and returned just after 2:00PM. Our barrister finished off his opening statement (4.5 hours, not a bad effort) and then the opposition questioned our witness list in about an hour and the judge called it a day. I was expecting the questioning to be quite lengthy and rigorous, attempting to disarm or discredit the evidence we had submitted against them but that didn’t appear to be their strategy on that particular day.

There were a number of things that I thought were quite interesting about the whole experience:

The Federal Court building in Brisbane is very nice
Apparently silence or near enough to it is a virtue, you could hear a pin drop most of the time even outside of the court room
Barristers and other legal staff bow when entering and leaving the court room
You can now give an oath or an affirmation to swear that you’re telling the truth. An oath can be performed over a Catholic bible, Qur’an and many others.
Not knowing the line of questioning from a barrister is unsettling.
Knowing the line of questioning can be unsettling as well, as you wonder why they might pursue that line of questioning in the first place and what they hope to achieve out of it further down the road.
Court reporters can apparently hear nearly everything that happens within the court room, regardless of how softly it might be spoken. While they can record the conversation taking place are break neck pace, you still need to slow down slightly to allow them to take it down accurately.
Instead of a barrister referring to other barristers as Mr Smith or Smith, they are referred to as ‘my learned friend’
There are a lot of terms for various elements of a court case, evidence and processes. Due to their respective significance, barristers always use the correct name for each element to avoid confusion. However, it makes their speech patterns very different from everyday life.
Barristers need to stand before addressing the court. When there is a lot of to-ing and fro-ing between each party and the judge, watching the barristers stand and sit is humorous.
Only the barristers are permitted to address the court, other legal staff are not – regardless of how qualified they might be. I think even if the judge requires clarification, that will go from the other legal staff to the barrister to relay to the judge
Barristers cannot provide documents to the judge directly, they must go through a court assistant and subsequently through an assistant for the judge.
I think an assistant for a judge might be the most qualified personal assistant on the planet, having at least a legal degree under their belt.
The pace of a court case can vary dramatically, from watching paint dry boring to short, sharp and quite snappy.
Respect for one another and courtesy appear to be a requirement and highly regarded
Judges appear to be very patient people

The whole experience has been a real eye opener for what is involved in a court case and doing a great job. While I think everyone appreciates what legal teams generally need to do – the effort they expend attempting to be as thorough and complete as possible is quite remarkable. Aspects of this case, which I was involved in were related to internet marketing. A colleague at Mantra Group and I were concerned we weren’t going to be able to adequately explain the intricacies of it to the legal folk, as it is a specialist field and quite in depth, such that they could explain it to a judge. Despite that, the ability for our senior counsel to comprehend what was going on and apply it to a different circumstance was quite impressive, especially given it isn’t something they deal in regularly or at all.

Now we just need to wait for the judge to deliver his ruling, pretty exciting!

Posted in Life, Work | No Comments »

Personal Information, Over Disclosure & Security

Monday, January 18th, 2010

These days too many businesses that we interact with on a daily basis require far too much personal information about each and every one of us. A prime example of this is signing up for a non-essential service at a shopping centre or local shop – some of those businesses require a comparable amount of information to that of a bank. Why do they need all that information?

I recently signed up at our local video store in Upper Coomera on the Gold Coast and they required a credit card or debit card, without one they simply wouldn’t sign you up for an account. I appreciate that they probably have issues getting money from clients who return videos late, however I’m not convinced that providing my credit card information is a reasonable measure and I’ll tell you why.

Every time I see someone pick up a pen and write down my personal information, especially if they aren’t an organisation who’s business is managing personal information, it worries me. Everytime a EFTPOS terminal is down and they take a manual imprint of a credit card, it worries me. In the case of the Upper Coomera video shop, the staff member wrote my credit card information down on a signup form – but once they’ve entered my information into the computer – what happens with that piece of paper? Is it simply scrunched up and put in the waste paper basket, burned, shredded or none of the above. What about once it is entered into the computer, is it encrypted or stored unencrypted for anyone to see. Can any staff member at the video store view my personal information, including my complete set of credit card details? Is the business and their staff adequately equipped and trained to handle that sort of sensitive information?

In my opinion, these are all good questions that the average person never thinks about. They assume that our personal information is handled with care, that businesses have reliable processes in place to minimise the potential risk of having their clients information disclosed or compromised.

These sorts of issues are being raised more and more frequently in the mainstream media, fueled by the unchecked rise in personal information and identity theft taking place. Getting this ugly secret out into the open is the only way to deal with it – people need to be made aware of it and what sort of measures they can put in place to reduce the likelihood of their information getting out into the wild.

The sad thing is, that while I read their terms of service and I know they are bound by the Australian Privacy Act – I still signed up for an account at my local Gold Coast video store. I pressed them to sign me up without that information but they wouldn’t budge and the alternative was a Video Ezy at Helensvale – a 15 minute drive away, hardly convenient.

If you take anything away from this, let it be an increased awareness of what and how often you disclose your personal information and to what types of people, organisations or companies.

Posted in General, Life | 2 Comments »

29

Wednesday, December 30th, 2009

It is that time of the year again, I’m now officially 29 years of age!

I woke up this morning slightly bleary eyed to Claire and Hugo wishing me a happy birthday which is fantastic. Being some what of a present fanatic, Claire thought I should open a present immediately and I obliged and received the following completely kick arse gifts:

A medium sized box of Ferrero Rocher. After the walloping I took over Christmas with great food and fantastic sweet treats, I couldn’t have possibly managed a massive box again like last year.
Two recent framed photos of Hugo to put on my desk at work, which I love dearly – he is a handsome little man.
A Nintendo Wii with the Wii Sports game and a second Wii Remote. This was a joint venture between Claire’s family and it was completely unexpected – I would have been more than happy with the first two presents.

We set about our morning routine with Hugo and we had pancakes with maple syrup for breakfast. Once that was done, I had to open the Nintendo Wii box, to make sure everything was in order of course. I was impressed with the neat boxing of the components and now easy it was to setup. More importantly, it worked but that took a couple of hours to verify!

As is the tradition, we went to Hogs Breath for lunch which is located on the Gold Coast spit beside Marina Mirage. When I booked, the lady at Hogs Breath mentioned that there was a lot of traffic around today – fantastic to know. I flicked off an SMS to everyone and we were soon on our way. To our surprise, as soon as we got to the M1 overpass at Upper Coomera we could see that all south bound lanes on the M1 were nose to tail and moving very slowly. We later heard on the radio that a car had burst into flames on the motorway and emergency services were on the scene – sure fire way to stop a major arterial if there ever was one.

To get around the huge backlog of traffic, we slipped along the service road and onto Hope Island Road. Fortunately the road was clear but a much slower driving speed as it isn’t a highway. After suffering through a moderate amount of heavy traffic coming through Southport, we managed to make it to Hogs Breath about 20 minutes late.

Andrew and Belinda travelled from Ipswich for lunch, braving the horrific traffic which was great and as a present said they’d help pay for a replacement graphics card since mine finally broke recently. Brendan rode in on his new Kawasaki Ninja, he of course didn’t have to suffer the traffic but he did play on my love of coffee and gave me a couple bags of chocolate coated coffee beans! Kylie, Brett, Hollie, Blake and Summer also joined me for lunch, Blake napped most of the time but Summer was full of beans – she is gorgeous.

Arriving home, Lucy was here waiting for us – which was a little senendipitous as we hadn’t arranged it at all but she arrived only minutes before we got home. Following on from the Nintendo Wii theme, Lucy and Michael gave me WWE Smackdown Vs Raw – which is an American wrestling game for those who don’t follow it. I had a quick game of it but got completely hammered, wasn’t as easy to pick up as tennis or boxing!

I’ve had a great 29th birthday and I’d just like to thank everyone who travelled to the Gold Coast, phoned, SMS’d, instant messaged, emailed and offered well wishes for my birthday. I can say that I have been absolutely spoiled rotten – thank you to everyone for the great presents.

Next year I’ll be knocking on the door of the big three zero!

Posted in Family, Life | No Comments »

Improper Right Turn

Monday, October 26th, 2009

The Gold Coast is still recovering from the SuperGP that was held last week and over the weekend. As a result of the racing carnival being on the Gold Coast, there are serious road closures as a result.

Last week as a by product of the closures, there was a significant amount of pressure put on roads that don’t normally cater for that volume of traffic and there was some very slow and long drives home – one of which took me nearly one and a half hours.

On the way home from work yesterday, I pulled out of the Circle on Cavill car park and was about to head south and suffer through the traffic again and then noticed a bit of an opportunity. Just before I pulled out onto Ferny Avenue, I noticed that the traffic was on red lights at Ferny Avenue and Beach Road and either a police officer on the ground or red lights was holding the traffic on Thomas Drive heading into Chevron Island.

The opportunity I speak of, was a not quite so legal right turn or legally speaking an improper right turn. If you view the intersection of Cavill Avenue & Ferny Avenue in Google Street View, you’ll see it is marked turn left only but directly in front there is a nice big break in the traffic island.

Opportunistically, given the traffic was held at both lights and there was literally not a single car in sight – I nipped through the break in the traffic island to head north on Ferny Avenue. Of course, this all ended in tears and a traffic violation when, as soon as I pulled out, a Gold Coast Highway Patrol car exited the pick up and drop off area for Mantra Circle on Cavill.

There is a lesson in all of this though, the law is always watching or at least watching Surfers Paradise the week after the Gold Coast SuperGP!

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rediATM Follows The Crowd & Raises ATM Fees

Monday, October 5th, 2009

At the start of September I applauded rediATM for being, what I considered front runners, by not following the crowd and issuing a $2.00 fee to customers using their ATM network throughout Australia. You can imagine my disappointment when only a month later, I used the rediATM in front of Woolworths at the Upper Coomera City Centre and I was charged $2.00 for my time.

I have no idea what it costs rediATM to provide their ATM network throughout Australia, however I get the impression that it has absolutely no bearing on the $2.00 fee they charge. It isn’t an coincidence that nearly every ATM provider charges $2.00 for the service – it is a small amount of money that consumers hate having to pay but tolerate because it seems as though it is an inconsequential amount of money. This is the how the banks make literally hundreds of millions of dollars annually, charging lots of small fees which seem innocuous on their own, collectively annoying but still small enough that it begrudgingly dismissed.

For no other reason than I had a good feeling about rediATM until now, I would have used their ATM in front of Woolworths and ‘happily’ copped the existing $1.75 on the chin but felt good about it because they weren’t being a lemming.

Now that rediATM have increased their ATM to $2.00 like everyone else, I’ll make a point of not using it and get money out when purchasing at Woolworths.

Posted in Life | 2 Comments »