Court Visit: Details of a Case Witnessed in District Court

Running head: COURT VISIT
Court Visit
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1
COURT VISIT
For the purpose of this assignment I decided to visit the District court and the Magistrate
court in Brisbane. I visited the courts on the same the same day on 25th October 2017. I visited
the district court once and then the magistrate court. I went to the district court at 10 am and to
the magistrate court at 2 pm in the afternoon on Monday. In both the courts I witnessed one case
each. This paper has details about the case which I had witnessed in the district court.
The name of the case which was witnessed by me was Storry v Commissioner of Police
[2017] QDC 282. The case was an appeal against the decision made in the magistrate court. On
the day it was a hearing date for the case where the final judgment was to be provided by the
judge. The counsel on behalf of the appellant was M R Fitzpatrick and on behalf of the
respondent was Gallagher. The solicitors on behalf of the appellant were Direct brief and on
behalf of the respondent was Director of Public Prosecutions. The court in which the case was
held was preceded over by Dearden DCJ. In this case the appellant had been found guilty of not
giving way to a vehicle at an intersection which had a stop sign. A fine had been imposed on the
appellant of $475 along with $93.50 as court fee and $104 as witness expenses. The appeal to the
court have been made under five grounds. These are that judge improperly considered the
damage borne by the vehicles, the judge failed to consider appellant’s defence that the Hyundai
was speeding which resulted in the collision with the appellant, The judge did not consider
aspects of Senior Constable Wilson’s proof related to the issue of speed , the appellant seeks to
adduce fresh evidence in relation to speed and the judge was wrong to take Mr Weir’s evidence.
The appeal was dismissed by the district court and the decision of the magistrate court
had been upheld. The court had based its decision on certain case laws such as Gallagher v The
Queen (1986) 160 CLR 392, Johnson v Queensland Police Service [2014] QCA 195, McDonald
v Queensland Police Service [2017] QCA 255 and Powell v Chief Executive Officer of Customs