Tag: chris nyst
  • Announcements, Natasha Dawson

Recognition that Speaks to Results: Best Lawyers & Best Law Firms 2026 Australia

We are proud to share some exciting news with our clients, colleagues, and community. In the recently released 2026 edition of Best Lawyers, our firm’s founder, Chris Nyst, has once again been recognised for his outstanding work in Criminal Defence. Chris has been included in Best Lawyers since 2024, a testament to his enduring dedication, […]

  • Announcements, Natasha Dawson

Back to Square

“Chris Nyst took to the stage – along with film producer Trish Lake and award-winning actor David Wenham - to take part in a lively Q&A, hosted by local radio personality Bern Young, to announce the long-awaited sequel to their 2003 crime/comedy triumph, Gettin’ Square.”
  • Nicola Ellis, Property, Wills and Estates

The Fine Detail

As anyone can tell you, the property market is going absolutely gangbusters right now. So much so that a bidder at an auction in Sydney’s south last Saturday accidently bid against herself just as she was about to be declared the new owner of the property for sale at the hotly-contested auction. The final price was $1.62 million, with her previous bid being $1.619 million. The underbidder’s last offer was $1.618 million.
  • Brendan Nyst, Defamation, Litigation

Heroes and Villains

Some years ago I attended a breakfast at the Sheraton Hotel on the Gold Coast, at which the then highly-respected - and now much-maligned - Victoria Cross recipient, Ben Roberts-Smith, was the featured guest speaker. In his riveting address, Mr Roberts-Smith enthralled his audience with a detailed account of his service with the Australian Defence Force in Afghanistan, including the extraordinary events that saw him bestowed Australia’s highest award for valour and devotion to duty in the theatre of war. As anyone who has heard the war hero’s harrowing tale of combat and courage under fire could tell you, it’s a hell of a yarn. And boy, did he tell it well.
  • Chris Nyst, Opinion, Politics, Privacy

A Right To Know

Don’t you sometimes miss the good, old-fashioned Moral High Ground? As a post-war baby, the world I was born into seemed a brave and righteous one. Our fathers had just fought and died to free us all from fascism and oppression. The world had paid a terrible price, but it was all worth it.  In the end we won, and the Bad Guys lost.
  • Alex Somers, Criminal Law

Malice Aforethought

Last week, a Queensland mother became the first person to be charged under the State’s new, expanded definition of murder laws, after allegedly leaving her two infant children to die in the blistering heat of her car, after falling asleep one Saturday afternoon.
  • Chris Nyst, Criminal Law, Opinion

The Means To The End

About ten years before the birth of Christ the great Roman poet Publius Ovidius Naso, in his collection of epistolary poems known as The Heroides, coined the Latin phrase Exitus acta probat, which translates roughly to the often-quoted mantra ‘The end justifies the means’. It is a sentiment celebrated by the Italian Renaissance writer Niccolo Machiavelli in the 1500’s and enthusiastically embraced by a long list of authoritarian dictators throughout history. Thankfully, it has no place in the criminal justice system of any modern western democracy.
  • Traffic Law

Driver Lock-Out Laws

Over the next 24 months or so, the State government looks set to roll out various amendments to our traffic laws which will have a significant effect on penalties meted out to drink drivers on our roads. On 12 September this year, the Queensland Parliament assented to the Transport Legislation (Road Safety and Other Matters) Amendment Act 2019, which introduces substantial changes to a swathe of traffic regulation legislation. Amongst the more notable changes are provisions regarding the mandatory use of interlock devices for those convicted of any drink driving offence.
  • Alex Somers, Criminal Law, Traffic Law

High Time For Reform?

A common submission by Queensland defence lawyers representing drug-driving offenders goes something like this: “My client had not in fact smoked cannabis for several days prior to driving, but hangover traces of the drug must have remained in his system, unbeknownst to him."
  • Chris Nyst, Criminal Law, International, Opinion

Mea Culpa

They say confession is good for the soul. That may be so, but sometimes it seems there's a whole lot of things it's not nearly so good for. Just ask Liam Neeson.
  • Chris Nyst, Criminal Law, Opinion

A Cure For The Common Scold

The wheels of Justice turn slowly, but grind exceedingly fine. One of the biggest movies of 1967 was Franco Zeffirelli’s rollicking cinematic rom-com treatment of William Shakespeare’s comedy Taming of the Shrew, written and first performed four centuries earlier in the late 1500’s. The 1967 movie of the same name starred Hollywood’s then hottest couple, the Brangelina of their day, Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, as the strong-willed couple Katherina and Petruchio, who are pitched together in a head-long battle of the sexes.For those who need to brush up on their Shakespeare, the Shrew plot follows the efforts of embattled dad Baptista Minola to marry off his two daughters, Bianca and Katherina.
  • Chris Nyst, Criminal Law, International

The Ire Of The Beholder

Like beauty itself, art is undoubtedly very much in the eye of the beholder. A couple of years back, a world-renowned Brisbane-born street artist, whose celebrated work is permanently exhibited in the Australian National Gallery and regularly sells for thousands of dollars in the swank art-houses of Sydney and Melbourne, was accused of painting graffiti at various sites around Brisbane. For his sins he was charged by Queensland police with wilful damage of property.