McDonald v FAI (NZ) General Insurance Co Ltd - [1999] 1 NZLR 583

Practice and procedure — Costs — Conduct of proceedings — Barristerial immunity — Authority to act — Discharge of obligations to client and Court — Whether jurisdiction to impose personal costs order on counsel — Public interest — Hopeless case — No notification of attendant risks — Applicability of wasted costs principles — Decisions improperly taken — Requirement that conduct amount to serious dereliction of duty to client and Court on practitioners' part — Indemnity for costs by plaintiff's legal advisers — Law Reform Act 1936, s 9.

Law practitioners — Solicitors — Lien — Application for lien over judgment sum — Whether Court should exercise jurisdiction in former solicitors' favour — Distinction between possessory lien and inchoate right — Whether lien over judgment sum defeating all other claimants or whether merely equitable right to seek Court's intervention to protect solicitors or former solicitors — High Court Rules, R 567.

Practice and procedure — Costs — Revision — Law Practitioners Act 1982, s 146(1).