Australia, April 21 -- New South Wales Land and Environment Court issued text of the following judgement on March 21:

1. By a notice of motion filed on 7 March 2025 the plaintiff seeks an order that I recuse myself from further hearing of these proceedings. My first involvement with the case was the hearing on 17 and 19 February 2025 of the defendants' application for a permanent stay. I have described the conduct of that hearing in Kearney v Amirbeaggi [2025] NSWSC 147 at [42-45]. The hearing was adjourned on 19 February 2025, when I made procedural orders which are set out at the beginning of the above judgment. They included that the plaintiff's substantive claim was listed for final hearing commencing on 28 April 2025 (with my estimate of ten days) and that the part heard stay applications be stood over to that day.

2. Order 5 of 19 February 2025 was that three notices of motion by which the respective parties sought to strike out subpoenas issued by each opposing party were listed for hearing on 7 March 2025.

3. On 7 March 2025 the plaintiff opened proceedings with an application that the argument on subpoenas should be adjourned pending disposition of a recusal application that he proposed to make in respect of myself. As I recorded in a brief ex tempore judgment dismissing the adjournment application, he refused my repeated requests that he outline the particulars of apprehended and actual bias that he said would be the basis for seeking recusal. In the absence of any particulars I refused to adjourn the subpoena argument. The plaintiff proposed the following directions with respect to further conduct of his notice of motion for recusal:

(1) Plaintiff file and serve any evidence he relies on by 7 March 2025.

(2) Defendants file and serve any evidence that they rely on by 14 March 2025.

(3) Plaintiff file and serve any written submissions by 21 March 2025.

(4) Defendants file and serve any written submissions by 28 March 2025.

4. The plaintiff proposed that the motion for recusal then be listed before me for hearing with an estimate of one and a half days, on some date after 28 March 2025. I refused to make such orders. There could be no need for such a timetable. On the basis of the plaintiff's proposed order 1, he indicated that his evidence in support of recusal would be ready that day, 7 March. I ordered that the recusal application be listed for hearing on 21 March 2025 and I allowed the plaintiff up to 13 March 2025 (six days) to file any further evidence in support and up to 20 March 2025 for him to file written submissions.

5. By email to my associate on 13 March 2025 the plaintiff sought extension of time for affidavits out to 24 March 2025, and an extension for his submissions to 31 March 2025. He sought adjournment of the date for hearing the recusal application to sometime in April 2025. By that email the plaintiff asked that the proceedings be re-listed on 17 or 18 March 2025 for mention. The associate informed the plaintiff by return email of my position that none of the proposed variations to the existing orders would be made and that the proceedings would not be re-listed for mention.

6. On 20 March 2025 the plaintiff emailed to my associate 90 pages of written submissions with 376 pages of attached documents. He also sent by email an affidavit sworn by himself on 19 March 2025, which refers to 29 annexures as listed in a table said to comprise 4,874 pages. The annexures were not actually attached. However, all the documents referred to are items that are already on the Court file or within my associate's email records, with the exception of a few items. The items that I have not been able to locate are as follows:

F an email from the plaintiff to the defendants' lawyers and Dr Grace of 16 February 2025 said to be copied to my chambers but not in fact received;

G an email of 17 February 2025 from the defendants' solicitor to the plaintiff concerning courtroom 11C;

P an email from the plaintiff to the defendants' solicitor dated 26 February 2025 regarding a white folder for the Court of Appeal;

BB medical records of Sutherland Hospital mental health division;

CC medical records of Gosford Hospital mental division.

*Rest of the document and Footnotes can be viewed at: (https://www.caselaw.nsw.gov.au/decision/195caa98851c3f4645d82339)

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