The Court held that a Magistrate who correctly directed herself on the onus of proof and made findings consistent with that onus throughout her reasons did not misapply the onus merely because, after rejecting the defendant's fraud case, she stated an ultimate conclusion in the plaintiff's favour — the reasons had to be read fairly and as a whole. The Court also held that where a Magistrate's positive findings of genuineness of documents subsumed a subsidiary argument about when fraudulent creation allegedly occurred, the failure to separately address that subsidiary argument did not constitute a failure to address a submission worthy of serious consideration. The Court expressly left open whether a ground framed as failure to address a submission 'worthy of serious consideration' necessarily raises a question of law under s 39(1) of the Local Court Act 2007 (NSW).
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