County court

Interestingly, the penalty notice did not specify which option applied, and instead listed all of them.

Akbars filed an appeal in the County Court and argued that subsection 6 requires that the penalty notice must quote, state why the Secretary of State thinks the employer is liable to the penalty, end quote.

In advance of that hearing, the Minister filed evidence making it clear which aspect of section 15 subsection 1 she believed to apply.

The County Court held that the penalty notice was valid and did comply with subsection 6. the Court of Appeal dismissed Akbar's appeal, and so the restaurant appealed to the Supreme Court, which is where we pick things up.

the justices began by noting that the statutory regime is penal in nature, and when the state imposes a penalty of this kind, there should be a proper reason given as to why they are doing it and why the penalty is justified.

The person who is affected is also entitled to know why the penal power of the state is being invoked against them, not only for reasons of fairness, but also so that they can decide if they want to appeal.

Subsection 6 demands that a reason be given, and this is supported by the constitutional context discussed.

An employer who is issued a penalty notice should be allowed to make an informed decision about a possible appeal.

And what happened when it went to the courts then?

Well, the County Court and the High Court said pretty much the same thing.

I mean, one of the problems which we talked about before is the general boundaries rule, Section 60 of the 2002 Land Registration Act, which used to be in the Land Registration Rules before that.

The Land Registry don't guarantee the boundary under the Land Registration Rules.

And so they argued based on what we talked about previously in Bishop and Jacques and the likes, then that's even if the land which he is correct then we've got a boundary agreement an informal boundary agreement which would be binding on mr mr marsh when he bought in 2021

so what was the decision

Well, I'd say both the County Court and the High Court basically said this email from the predecessor wasn't sufficiently showing consensus.

He didn't really have any conscious decision.

Yeah.

So, um, like I said at the beginning, we have a team of, of attorneys who work in the county courts handling misdemeanor offenses-

Mm-hmm

... as well as the misdemeanor, uh, specialty courts.

So we have, um, uh, the DWI court, the misdemeanor drug or Camino court.

Uh, those are run out of County Courts one and 11.

We have the veterans treatment court misdemeanor side in-

Mm-hmm

In Victoria, it applies to children aged 14 to 17 years, charged with specified serious offenses, including home invasion and aggravated home invasion, carjacking and aggravated carjacking, intentionally or recklessly causing serious injuries in circumstances of gross violence, serious or repeat armed robbery, serious or repeat aggravated burglary.

These cases are transferred or uplifted from the Children's Court to the County Court, where adult sentencing principles and much higher maximum penalties apply.

The major differences are the Children's Court can impose no more than three years detention.

The County Court can impose substantially longer adult sentences.

Aggravated home invasion and aggravated carjacking now carry a maximum of life imprisonment.

Imprisonment is no longer legally treated as an absolute last resort for children.