Advice sought for first time tribunal appearance

No your first listing will be a pre-trial or listing conference ("mediation"). Depending on which Magistrates Court you're in, typically the wait for a trial date will be anything from 3 weeks to 6 months.

 

@thatbum where are you practising?

 

He doesn't practice, he's good enough now

 

I work in Fremantle for a community legal centre. I've otherwise worked a few other places, but all in the Perth community legal sector.

 

Nice. Love Freo. Fast Eddys still there?

 

Thanks for that, it gives me a time frame, which is always handy

 

Right, we have a court date - 26 November.

A quick question - is there any way to access past decisions for the magistrates' court? I've been able to find higher courts' decisions, but no luck for the magistrates' court. Any info re this would be gold

 

Unfortunately magistrates court decisions/reason for decisions are not published on the internet unlike the higher court.

To obtain previous decisions/transcript you will need to be the party to the action or a lawyer acting for the party. You could otherwise apply to the court which is more trouble than it's worth.

 

Thanks for the info theobserver - much appreciated! At least now I know not to waste any more of my time by trying to find them

 

What sort of info are you looking for in particular? Most cases turn on their own specific facts, so its hard to get much useful information unless your matter turns on a legal issue where the legislation isn't clear.

 

I thought that it might be of interest if I posted the outcome of this process.

We had our hearing date scheduled for last Thursday, 26 November. We were listed for 10:15am, so turned up on time, as did our witnesses. It appears that all cases for the day are listed at 10:15am however, so it was very much like a cattle call. I went along to our court (7.2) where I had to advise the court officer that myself and hubby were present. Went back outside, started waiting.

Our ex-tenants didn't appear until around 11am but it didn't appear to matter, as we hadn't been called on by that point. Finally we ended up before the registrar at around 12:30pm for a pre-trial conference (mediation), in which each specific item of the matter was scrutinised. I justified our claim (we were the applicants) line by line, showing receipts etc to the registrar. He had a look and at each point asked to hear the respondents' story. There was some back and forth (discussion) about the merits of our application, then the registrar wound it up for a lunch break and advised both parties to go away and think about whether we could come to an agreement.

We had about 35 minutes for lunch, then came back. After some more negotiation, we ended up being about $300 apart. The registrar then said that if we split the difference, both of us would go away unhappy, but at least the matter would be resolved and we wouldn't have to come back for another day to get the hearing sorted out (he advised it was unlikely that we'd get a hearing on the same day).

Anyhow, we did all agree to that. By this point (2:40pm) I think we were all just completely over it!

We started off seeking $1167, and ended up getting $940, so I consider we did relatively better than the other side.

It was definitely a learning experience. Not one I would want to repeat unless I had to, but worthwhile for what I learned from it. I thought the registrar did a great job, and told him so - I had walked in there not being prepared to concede anything, and this obviously changed!

 

Getting $940 out of $1167 from the first appearance - sounds like a great outcome, even if your case was watertight!

 

I think you did well @JenW . You could have walked away with nothing so it was much better than that and also gave you a good insight into how it all works.
Thanks for giving the description on how it all works too.

 

Well done, Jen! Seems like a very good result, but as you can see does take up half a day unfortunately.

Sounds like you were well prepared with all of your notes and documentation, which is very important

 

Thanks everyone

I'm pretty happy with how it went. Considering our ex-tenants' starting position was that they were prepared to pay $50 towards the cleaning, I definitely think that we did comparatively better out of the process.

I definitely have a much better idea of what's involved now, which is reassuring in itself. Next time I will be less nervous and more prepared for things like the delays which happen on the day. I slept pretty badly the night before.... found myself wide awake at 3:50am on the day.... that was it for sleep for me!!