Turner v Norwalk Precast Burial Systems Pty Ltd

[2025] VSCA 94

Victorian Court of Appeal

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Interrogate

Catchwords

1. Practice and Procedure
2. › Procedural fairness
3. › Self-represented litigant
4. › Nature of duty owed by trial judge
5. › Whether trial judge failed to correct misconception about entitlement to adduce evidence through respondent's witnesses
6. › Whether failure to warn of possibility respondent might not call evidence constituted denial of fair trial
1. Practice and Procedure
2. › No case submission
3. › Self-represented litigant
4. › Whether judge should have alerted self-represented litigant to alternative statutory basis for establishing causation
5. › Wrongs Act 1958 (Vic), s 51(2)
1. Torts
2. › Negligence
3. › Causation
4. › Statutory causation provisions
5. › Effect of s 51(2) of Wrongs Act 1958 (Vic)
6. › Meaning of 'appropriate case'
7. › Whether evidentiary gap provision limited to dust disease or multiple exposure cases
8. › Wrongs Act 1958 (Vic), s 51

Quick Take

A trial judge's duty to a self-represented litigant extends to correcting apparent misconceptions about the right to adduce evidence through the opposing party's witnesses, and may extend to alerting the litigant to the availability of s 51(2) of the Wrongs Act 1958 as an alternative means of establishing causation where factual causation under s 51(1)(a) cannot be established.