LEGALLY SPEAKING

An Interview with Paul Sugden

Regular columnist and loyal source of legal advice, Paul Sugden of Victoria (formerly of Brisbane, where TAFTA found him some years ago) has agreed to let us get to know him better. He is shown here in his Hysport jumper. Which relates to one of our first questions for Paul: What is your trade mark?

- Loud colours- the Coogee jumper- but the photo is the Hysport alternative which lead to a case of Coogie v Hysport!! Itis so much more fun….

Naturally we also needed to know Paul’s star sign… He admits to being the Chinese year of the Ox (1961) and his Star Sign is Virgo…

What is your aim in life?

To be interviewed on ABC classical FM by Margaret Throsby.

What did you want to be when you grew up?
A fashion designer as I thought a dress was just two pieces of material sewn together - I lived in Darwin and found out that one piece was sufficient! - also a painter, a dentist, a priest (then realized that a monastic life was not going to be for me) so am really happy I get to advise creatives on legal issues as I'm probably a frustrated architect/designer/ artist at heart…

Is your mother proud of you?
Yes, but it took her until my twenty-sixth year to realise we were not the dreadful children she characterised us as, when we were children - but a lot of that had to do with a country town where we never were as smart as the other kids, or as successful.

Why do you write for TAFTA?

Because the knowledge I have learnt is not readily available to creative people, and as a frustrated creative it is my way of giving back to the community I could have joined if I hadn’t taken an academic streaming. TAFTA-ites are my ‘wild women’ (If you haven’t been to a FORUM yet, you should. This group is full of creativity, passion and above all is about learning with fun).

What is your favourite colour?

Blue, no yellow, no (ah!!! Really have to be into The Monty Python and the Holy Grail scene) – no, my favourite colour is anything vibrant and in harmony and generally not black.

What is your favourite wine?

All wines!! But only so long as they are drunk with friends and family and regrettably now only in moderation. The hangovers have become too bad to consider. The warm chuckly inner feeling is as far as I go now.

What is your favourite music?

Classical and opera and much else except for Walton and Elgar pre-1910. I married my wife to keep me up to date with modern music. The joke in the family is that I bought the Urban Hymns CD for my wife by going into a modern record store and saying: "I want the CD that is the copyright infringement…". Thankfully the staff member knew it was the Verve.

If you were an animal, which animal would you be?

A labradoodle (intelligent, family friendly, mischievous… has wavy hair that always needs cutting).. or any animal not commonly used to describe lawyers (reptiles most commonly used for this)..

How to you cope with all the vicious Lawyer Jokes?

Ah, but us lawyers love jokes about ourselves- if you can't laugh at your profession, life has become too serious- and, someone has to keep the publishers in jokes! My favourite: What is the description of waste? A bus full of lawyers going over a cliff with two empty seats…

What is your favourite type of cheese?

Stilton- but the doctors now say it has too much cholesterol.- (don't you hate that it’s the cholesterol that gives it the taste and the calories?!

What are you having for lunch today?

Spicy chickpea patties with tomato salsa and a boiled egg- (homemade- yes he can cook) (I cannot make up my mind whether to go vegetarian or not and this is one of my balance days)

What is your greatest passion in life?

‘Madly truly deeply" my wife and kids, as they are the wind beneath my wings. After them, fostering creativity – as it is so much better to be creative than to copy, and regrettably we seem to accept something only if it worked overseas, but gradually we will start to change.

Needles and snakes and heights. I bungie-jumped on my honeymoon in Queenstown, New Zealand to try to cure the heights issue and heard my wife yelling, "I’m going to be a widow!!" Since then I have done a tandem hang glider over Cape Byron. The fear of heights is subsiding; the others I avoid as best I can.

What is the place you liked best, encountered in overseas travels? What is the place you like best, encountered during travels in Australia?

Overseas: London or Venice in the off season, but for the completely opposite reasons. Australia: I would love to say Bondi - but beaches and I generally do a 15-minute statutory visit, then it’s off to find something else… there are too many to mention all, Pemberton WA, Clare, the Coorong, the Flinders Ranges in SA…

What is your favourite aspect/theme of The Law?

Intellectual property (copyright, trade marks etc) and how these protect creativity.

What is your favourite poem?

"When I was one and twenty" by AE Houseman   

What CD is currently in your CD player?

It’s a multi-player so there are five CDs that get put on random select. Here goes: 1) Faure requiem 2) The Big Chill sound track 3) Acardy - After the Ball 4) Haydn Organ Mass & Mozart's solemn vespers for confession 5) Abba Gold - when it’s a five-CD player there often has to be a little something for everyone.

What’s your favourite piece of music?

Too hard to pick one: Pachabal's Cannon in D, and Pilgrims chorus from Wagner’s Tannhauser

How about your favourite piece of opera?

The duet and trio in the final scene of Gounod’s Faust where Margarethe sees the devil coming for Faust, but Faust is trying to get Margarethe to come with him. It starts as a duet, then builds to a crescendo with all three singing, Margarethe pleading for Gods's forgiveness… It just puts shivers down my spine and brings tears to my eyes, no matter how many times I hear it.

Do you have another favourite Lawyer Joke for us?

But of course: ONLY IN AMERICA!
BEST LAWYER STORY OF THE YEAR Charlotte, North Carolina.

A lawyer purchased a box of very rare and expensive cigars, then insured them against, among other things, fire.
  Within a month, having smoked his entire stockpile of these great cigars, and without yet having made even his first premium payment on the policy, the lawyer filed a claim against the insurance company.
  In his claim, the lawyer stated the cigars were lost "in a series of
small fires."
  The insurance company refused to pay, citing the obvious reason, that the man had consumed the cigars in the normal fashion. The lawyer sued…. and WON!

(Now stay with me here.)

Delivering the ruling, the judge agreed with the insurance company that the claim was frivolous. The judge stated nevertheless, that the lawyer held a policy from the company, in which it had warranted that the cigars were insurable and also guaranteed that it would insure them against fire, without defining what is considered to be "unacceptable fire" and was obligated to pay the claim.
  Rather than endure lengthy and costly appeal process, the insurance company accepted the ruling and paid $15,000 to the lawyer for his loss of the cigars lost in the "fires".

NOW FOR THE BEST PART..

After the lawyer cashed the cheque, the insurance company had him arrested on 24 counts of ARSON!!!
  With his own insurance claim and testimony from the previous case being used against him, the lawyer was convicted of intentionally burning his insured property and was sentenced to 24 months in jail and a $24,000 fine.

  This is a true story and was the First Place winner in the Criminal
Lawyers Award Contest.

What can you tell us about your first date?

This might not have been my first date, but it was taken in 1978 on the Sunday after the Form 6 formal.

Due to disasters that my date had experienced leading up to the formal (an assault charge for, um, slapping a girl on the face at a bar….) (before she even got home to get ready!) (and other things), the innocent boarder (me) did not make to the formal in time to have any official photos taken.

So the stunning lady (a blind date rigged up by a friend) has no photo to be remembered by, just lots of blond hair and a stunning black dress in chiffon with red and white floral pattern that does stick in my mind…

Paul T Sugden, Department of Business Law and Taxation, Berwick Campus, Monash University