Local Court deputy chief judge has long been embroiled in a bout with the chief justice
The NSW Local Court’s deputy chief judge, Sharon Freund, has urged the NSW Court of Appeal to reject state attorney-general Michael Daley’s request that she be subject to an NSW Judicial Commission investigation, reported The Australian.
Daley had been directed to make the request by the Local Court’s chief justice, Michael Allen, after Allen claimed that Freund violated protocol. Freund told the appeals court on Friday 23 October that Allen made the allegation in an attempt to take her responsibilities from her – something he had been trying to do for 18 months.
In June 2024, Allen flagged Freund’s supposed noncompliance with established conflict-of-interest conventions in relation to a criminal case filed against the adult child of a judge with whom Freund was personal friends. Freund did not bring in an interstate judge to hear the case, an oversight Allen said was exacerbated by her failure to disclose to him her connection to the parent.
Freund’s barrister Arthur Moses SC argued that Freund had dealt with that situation appropriately by passing the case to another judicial officer who had minimal or no link to the parties involved. Moses told the appeals court that Freund was not under a professional obligation to bring the matter to an interstate judge.
Moses said in a statement published by The Australian that on March 4, Allen called Freund into his chambers in the luncheon adjournment, “threw a file across a table towards her, accused her of perverting the course of justice…and accused her of lying”. Freund went to the judicial commission on 23 May.
The commission shot down Freund’s case. Commission members Murugan Thangaraj SC and Ingmar Taylor reportedly indicated that the case “had the flavour of makeweight allegations” and that Freund was familiar with the protocol she claimed did not exist, Moses said in a statement published by The Australian.
In August, Daley referred Freund’s conduct to the judicial commission as a result of the observations. Freund was notified of the investigation on 13 August, and Allen informed her that he planned to put her on leave while the commission conducted the investigation.
However, Moses alleged that the observations were unfair to Freund considering they were made while she was challenging her superior.
The barrister highlighted a WhatsApp conversation revealing that Allen had communicated with judicial commission members about the matter with Freund even though he had recused himself during the complaint. Moses accused Allen of making “a pejorative statement” in the communications and not fully recusing himself even though NSW chief justice Andrew Bell had made the recusal terms clear, per a statement published by The Australian.
Brendan Lim SC, Daley’s barrister, countered that putting Allen’s evidence forward would have resulted in “an endless back-and-forth between varying accounts of the same event,” per a statement published by The Australian.
Freund asked Court of Appeal justices Mark Leeming, Anthony Payne and Richard McHugh to veto the commission members’ observations and her referral to the judicial commission’s conduct division. The involved parties agreed to hold off on deliberations regarding the observations; however, a brief proceeding has been set for Tuesday 27 October to examine the handling of Freund’s referral to the judicial commission’s conduct division.
