The Queensland Court of Appeal held that to prove the tendency element of attempting to pervert the course of justice by causing a forged affidavit to be provided to the prosecution, the Crown need not prove the substantive contents of the affidavit were false — proof that the jurat was false (i.e., the deponent never swore the affidavit as represented) was sufficient to establish the requisite tendency, as the forgery itself created a risk of adverse interference with the ordinary course of justice. The Court also upheld the pre-trial ruling displacing legal professional privilege over solicitor-client communications relating to the forged affidavit, finding that prima facie evidence the client knowingly caused a forged document to be provided to his solicitor for use in submissions to the prosecution was sufficient to engage the crime/fraud exception under the Propend Finance framework, casting an evidentiary onus on the client which he failed to discharge.
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