Tag: lawyer
  • Brendan Nyst, Property

Supreme Court Rules Incentive Clawbacks Unenforceable

What goes up must come down, and vice versa. In a town that’s seen more than its share of booms and busts, landlords understand the concept all too well. In this town, when the cold winds of the economic winter blow, you cut your cloth to meet the market. If capturing a plum tenant means gifting them a rent-free period, or even shelling out for a fancy fit out, so be it. What you lose on the swing, you pick up on the merry-go-round. Or do you?
  • Chris Nyst, International, Opinion, Politics

Lest We Forget

Today marks the 96th anniversary of the end of  World War I. In four short years that conflict resulted in an estimated 40 million casualties, including over 200,000 young Australian soldiers killed or wounded in action. In the Battle of the Somme, the first day’s hostilities alone saw over 57,000 British casualties, and the overall body count eventually rose to over a million soldiers killed or wounded.  A little over a year earlier another 340,000 men had fallen on the Gallipoli peninsula. It was hailed as the “war to end all wars.” Unfortunately, things didn't quite turn out that way.
  • Chris Nyst, Criminal Law, Human Rights, Opinion

Exactly What They Take

Frank Darabont’s 1994 film The Shawshank Redemption is an enduring classic of American cinema. Based on the Stephen King novella Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption, it tells the story of Andy Dufresne, a young banker sentenced to life imprisonment in the tough Shawshank State Penitentiary for the murder of his wife and her lover, a crime he says he didn’t commit. That’s tough material for any audience, and when the film was first released it all but tanked at the box office. But eventually moviegoers came to embrace the morality tale at the heart of Andy’s redemption, and the film went on to outstanding critical acclaim, recognised as one of the best films of our time. Most of the most quotable quotes come from Andy’s fellow inmate Ellis “Red” Redding, played with understated dignity by the great Morgan Freeman, whose gentle narration becomes a quiet commentary of Dufresne’s desperate struggle to maintain his self-worth in the face of brutality and hopelessness.
  • Chris Nyst, Family Law

To Have And To Hold

Picture: Dylan Nolte Source: Unsplash In a recent matrimonial property dispute case, the Full Bench of the Family ...
  • Chris Nyst, Opinion

Big Things Grow

From little things big things grow. How true it is. I was filled with an enormous sense of pride recently when I drove past one of the giant Griffith University billboards (pictured above) celebrating the success of young Brisbane Barrister Joshua Creamer, a former member of the Nyst team.
  • Chris Nyst, Entertainment, Opinion

So Long Maggie And Dave, And Thanks For All The Fission

I guess just about everybody who's ever had anything much to do with the Australian film industry has a soft spot for television film reviewers Margaret Pomeranz and David Stratton. Affectionately referred to by all and sundry simply as Margaret and David, for 28 years the pair agreed, disagreed, and agreed to disagree, about an estimated 8000 films they reviewed, firstly at SBS on The Movie Show and then at the ABC in At The Movies, becoming what filmmaker Greg Maclean has called "a genuinely important part of the cultural landscape of cinema in Australia."
  • Chris Nyst, Human Rights, International, Opinion, Privacy

Carly Nyst Addresses UN Human Rights Council

On Friday last week my dear daughter Carly Nyst, a UK-based Australian lawyer who is currently the Legal Director of the human rights group Privacy International in London, addressed the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva on the right to privacy in the digital age. As part of a panel which included Flavia Panasieri , the Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights, and Special Rapporteur on freedom of expression with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, Catalino Botero Marino, Carly told the Commission that the right to privacy is a fundamental part of human dignity, which guarantees the protection of other human rights such as the freedom of expression, and should be jealously defended by the United Nations, particularly in the wake of WikiLeaks and the Edward Snowden Affair. The Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights Ms Botero said the Commission recognised that systematic collection of data by governments directly affects the right to privacy and freedom of expression, and appropriate safeguards and controls must be elaborated to prevent those negative effects on human rights.
  • Chris Nyst, Criminal Law, International

No Surprise In Pistorius Verdict

Notwithstanding all the hoopla being currently kicked up in the public press, I expect the  verdict hardly raised a single eyebrow amongst experienced criminal lawyers anywhere around the globe. On Friday Judge Thokozile Masipa found the celebrated South African Paralympian not guilty of murder, but guilty of culpable homicide. Neither finding would likely be considered in any way surprising or remarkable to anyone with a close understanding of the British legal system.
  • Chris Nyst, Opinion, Sport

Satts Tells It All In Glory

Yesterday I joined South Sydney faithful at the old Redfern Town Hall in Sydney for the launch of Glory, Glory, the autobiographical account of the life and times of South Sydney rugby league legend ‘Gentleman’ John Sattler. MC’ed by John’s premiership-winning son Scott, and introduced by life-long South Sydney tragic Ray Martin, the event was a raging success, not least because of the engaging reminiscences of the great man himself.
  • Chris Nyst, Opinion, Politics

Cedric Hampson, One Of God’s Own Gentlemen. RIP

When I received a call last night to hear my old friend and mentor Cedric Hampson QC had passed away at his home over the weekend I was left with a deep sense of sadness. Cedric was not only a great intellect, and a very fine lawyer, but he really was one of God’s own gentlemen. A published novelist and lover of the arts, the former rugby player, Rhodes Scholar and President of the Queensland Bar Association was a man for all seasons, equally at home dissecting thorny legal issues before the Court of Appeal as he was sipping red wine and chatting idly about our common interest in movies, music and the arts. Over the years  Cedric and I worked closely together on many cases, including the successful appeal of former One Nation leader Pauline Hanson, and he was  always an inspiration. He was rightly recognised as without peer in the Queensland legal profession for generations. Above all he was just a lovely man – always courteous, avuncular and generous of spirit - and he will be sorely missed.
  • Chris Nyst, Criminal Law, Human Rights, Opinion

Need For Restraint

Earlier this week I was sitting in the public gallery of a Magistrates Court on the Sunshine Coast waiting for my client's matter to be called before the magistrate, when a downcast defendant was led into the dock with both hands locked together in a pair of impressive-looking wrist restraints. The police prosecutor proceeded to launch into a dissertation on the defendant's misdemeanours, when the Magistrate abruptly interrupted.
  • Chris Nyst, Opinion

Breaking The Cycle

Violence begets violence. We’ve all become accustomed to television images of US police responding to even the most apparently minor civil disturbance with guns drawn and pointed, barking orders at suspects and bystanders alike, taking no prisoners and no chances whatsoever, because somebody, anybody, could suddenly turn violent and put them in a life-threatening situation. And it’s true, they could. But what came first, the chicken or the egg? Is America an armed society because everyone is armed to the back teeth, or is everyone in America armed to the back teeth because they live in an armed society? Do American police adopt their ‘shoot on sight’ approach because every suspect is lethally dangerous, or is the lethal danger at least in part a product of police willingness to ‘shoot on sight’?