The Supreme Court of New South Wales has handed Sydney boutique Green & Associates Solicitors a fairly blunt message: pay up or watch your case quietly expire.
The firm is suing its former executive assistant in what might be the most gloriously overstuffed employment dispute of the year. Among the allegations? Not just financial misconduct and rogue legal advice, but a failure to properly mind principal Dominic Green’s dog while he was on holiday. Yes, really.
The claim sheet reads like a law firm soap opera. The EA is accused of everything from “sabotaging” the firm by helping a colleague pursue a compensation claim, to failing to ensure staff adequately “held the fort” in Green’s absence. There are also the more conventional allegations: misappropriation of funds and stepping well outside the boundaries of non-lawyer duties.
Back in February, Kate Williams J ordered the firm to put up $240,000 in security for costs, split into three neat $80,000 instalments. The first was due mid-March. It wasn’t paid.
That lapse has consequences. By early April, the former EA moved to have the proceedings dismissed entirely. Predictably, the firm tried to slow things down, arguing the dismissal application was premature because it had appealed the security for costs order.
The Court was not impressed.
At a late-April hearing, the firm’s request for an adjournment was knocked back. The reasons were painfully procedural: they had agreed to the hearing date, confirmed it in writing, and then appeared to scramble for representation at the eleventh hour. Courts tend to frown on that sort of last-minute choreography.
The result is a ticking clock. Unless Green & Associates can get its financial house in order and meet the security requirements, the case risks being struck out before any of the more colourful allegations get properly tested.
Which is a pity, because few cases manage to combine employment law, fiduciary duty claims and canine care standards with quite this level of ambition.
