StackS timeS

multimillion dollar winfor teen on faulty bikeStacks lawyers are thrilled at winning a complex legal case after a six year battle. A teenager left badly impaired in an accident on a faulty mountain bike is finally getting the help and care he desperately needs.

“We worked closely with the teenager and his wonderful family for years and it gives us enormous satisfaction in being able to win a major compensation settlement for him that hopefully will assist him for the rest of his life,” said Ivan Dzajkovski, director of Stacks/Goudkamp.

The tragic case began when the boy was just 15 years old. He really wanted a mountain bike and for his birthday his parents gave him a $1,200 mountain pushbike from a top German brand.

The boy loved the bike and for months practiced on mild terrain. He was making a small jump in a local park with friends but as he landed the fork holding the front wheel in place suddenly snapped.

He landed head first. Even though he was wearing a helmet and other safety equipment supplied by the bike manufacturer, he was left with a traumatic brain injury.

The brain injury caused severe behavioural problems. The family was desperate to help their son and asked Ivan if anything could be done.

First of all, the legal team established through medical experts that the boy’s behavior was the result of the accident, then Ivan ordered metallurgy tests done on the bike’s fork to find out why it had suddenly snapped.

“This mountain bike is promoted by its maker as being able to withstand four metre falls but it snapped at this critical junction in just a small jump with a boy in the saddle. It shouldn’t have snapped like it did,” Ivan said.

The tests found the fork collapsed because of casting defects. There were microscopic bubbles in the metal compound which could only be seen when the fork was sliced open.

THE EDITION - WINTER 2012

Then began a conga line of companies blaming each other. Stacks/Goudkamp took legal action against the Australian importer of the bike. The importer sued the German maker of the bike. The German maker blamed the Taiwan company that manufactured the part. That firm blamed another Taiwan firm that fitted the part to the bike.

“It was the most complicated case I’ve ever been involved in,” Ivan said. Stacks/Goudkamp assembled a strong team to concentrate on the complex case. Senior administration assistant Nadine Luck organised all the paperwork and case management. Solicitor Emily Gair joined the firm primarily to concentrate on the case. Prominent barrister Anthony Black SC helped prepare the case for court.

“It was a great team effort. Emily worked doggedly on the case for years chasing the firms to get them to court,” Ivan said. Anthony Black SC took over fighting the case in court. Finally, on the fourth day of the trial, the firms agreed to settle out of court for an eight figure multimillion dollar sum.

“It was all done on our no-win-no-fee basis. The family couldn’t afford any other legal help as they had spent everything helping the boy,” Ivan said.

“But we were overjoyed for the family - the boy’s

fantastic parents and his two older sisters, who really needed help for the boy who is now 21.

“You live with these cases for years, really get to know the victims and their desperate families and they will never leave our thoughts. Being able to help them gives an enormous sense of satisfaction.”

www.stacklaw.com.auMORE THAN 20 LOCATIONS THROUGHOUT NSW, QLD & ACT

ivan dzajkovski & anthony black Scemily Gair (top) & nadine luck

Stacks fights

workers’comp cuts

Maurie Stack OAM, chairman of Stacks/The Law Firm, spoke out strongly against the State government’s changes to workers’ compensation saying they will hit the poorest and most vulnerable members of the community.

Maurie appeared in the media saying injured workers will suffer greatly under the changes which raises the threshold of “serious injury” to 30 per cent whole person impairment. This means even a worker who loses a foot won’t qualify for long term medical expenses.

He pointed out that half the blowout in the scheme was due to investment downturn in the global financial crisis, according to the government’s own actuaries.

“Why shouldn’t weemployers share the pain from an investment downturn?” asked Maurie, a former president of the Law Society of NSW.Lawyers in Stacks/The Law Firm are in the front line of trying to help injured workers and their families and get to know them very well. “These people aren’t rorters of the system.

Their injuries are genuine and real and it is just unfair that they alone should bear the brunt of a system that got out of control,” Maurie said.

“Making changes retrospective means that many people who hadn’t lodged their claim before 19 June - for example because they were awaiting a medical report - now miss out. How rude is that?”

The Injured Workers Support Network said 52 per cent of injured workers had contemplated suicide, one in four injuries led to divorce or separation, and 25 per cent had to move house.

maurie Stackchairman

images above show fracture in the bike’s frame.

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from aid to law A life helping others

michael Giles with aid workers in southern ethiopia in 2005

ben Stack, ceo

for 15 years american born michael Giles struggled in terrible conditions to bring a better and healthier life to people in some of the worst trouble spots in the world including angola, afghanistan, ethiopia and Somalia. But it was falling in love with an attractive Australian doctor in the middle of all this turmoil that brought him to work as a lawyer in Newcastle with Stacks/Goudkamp.

Born in California and raised in Utah, Michael studied health education before joining the Peace Corps and heading off to a remote village in Honduras.

“It was quite isolated and for me a real eye opener. I’d been one of ten non-Mormons in Utah but in the remote hills of Honduras I was really the odd one out.”

Michael found the work incredibly satisfying and saw it as his life’s calling. He returned to Los Angeles to do a masters in public health and embarked on a whirlwind life in aid organisations going from one catastrophe to another in the most dangerous zones in the world.

life on the thai-Burma border

Ben was still a relatively new lawyer when he decided to make his way to the remote and dangerous Thai-Burma border in 2006 to volunteer with a grass-roots refugee group, the Committee for Internally Displaced Karen People.

The Karen are an ethnic minority in north-eastern Burma caught up in a long running civil war against the Burmese military dictatorship and the Committee was collecting eyewitness accounts of alleged humanitarian and human rights abuses.

He landed in Angola just before yet another war broke out and had to be evacuated as bullets flew around him. Next was Cambodia in the turmoil of elections. Then Kazakhstan in the confusion and upheaval after the break-up of the Soviet Union.

He landed in Somalia just after the notorious US gunfight with warlords that was depicted in the movie ‘Black Hawk Down’. Michael and 14 other aid workers were taken prisoner by a warlord who told them they were “free to stay”.

“We were held for nine days while top level talks went on. The warlord said we were in the country illegally.”

Eventually the warlord let them go but Michael doesn’t think he was ransomed.

“Officially they don’t pay ransoms and we weren’t ever told it was a ransom.”

Next came Rwanda just after the genocide and Sri Lanka in the heart of Tamil tiger country.

It was here he met Australian doctor Jo Mesure who was working in a displaced persons camp for Doctors Without Borders. Amid the turmoil came romance. Michael would drive three hours across muddy and dangerous roads to see Jo whenever he had the chance.

When Jo went home to Newcastle in 1998 Michael decided Christmas in Australia sounded nice and made his first trip Down Under. When a hurricane hit Honduras they flew there together to help out. They went on to work together in Angola.

After 9/11 Michael went to Afghanistan with an aid mission. He joined up with Jo again and they worked in Ethiopia for two years. They decided to start a family and both agreed Australia would be the best place to do that.

When they returned to Australia, Jo worked in Aboriginal health out of Katherine while Michael acted house-husband. Finally they settled in Newcastle where Michael ran a youth crisis centre before doing a law degree.

“I’d just graduated when I heard Tom Goudkamp was looking for someone to help with the nuclear veterans case. We met and he hired me. I’ve been working on that case for a couple of years now but I’m also a regular lawyer in the Stacks/Goudkamp office in Newcastle.

“Despite all the frustrations of aid work, seeing all that has to be done to help people, it has been just fantastic. You meet wonderful people who are trying to make a better life for themselves.

“As a lawyer I’m also doing my best to help people who are in difficulties. I’m still fighting for justice for people hit with misfortune.”

Within days of arriving at the border town of Mae Sot, Ben was helping to document the stories of people who had suffered terribly and been forced to flee across the border.

“One Karen woman had fled across the border from Burma after her village had been attacked by the Burmese military 12 days earlier, killing her husband and son. It was confronting stuff and worlds apart from the issues I’d dealt with as a commercial litigation lawyer in Sydney.

“But the skills learned as a lawyer were surprisingly transferable. The process of

spending time with people and helping them to accurately record their story is what litigation lawyers do every day.”

Ben has been back to Mae Sot since and keeps in touch with some of the people he worked with.

“Taking a break from the ‘day to day’ and applying

your skills as a volunteer can be hugely rewarding.

I’m certain I took more from the experience than I was

able to give back.”

“there are lots of opportunities for lawyers to apply their skills to benefit communities, from local pro bono work to volunteer work in developing areas around the world,” says ben Stack, ceo of Stacks/the law firm.

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www.stacklaw.com.au

mary moloney (top) & michelle martin

Mary Moloney still has a touch of her lovely Irish accent and she gets great satisfaction helping Irish backpackers who get into trouble during their visit Down Under.

Irish, being Irish, do tend to get into a bit of trouble during their travels. But Patrick Crilly (25) was entirely blameless when he was bashed by a pub bouncer in Sydney’s Waterloo.

He concedes he’d had a few drinks but he was doing the honourable thing and going to the aid of a friend who’d become involved in an altercation on the footpath outside the Moore Park View Hotel.

Suddenly a security guard working at the pub grabbed Patrick and punched him on the jaw causing him to fall to the ground.

When he fell the back of his head hit the concrete and he lost consciousness. As a result of the injury he lost hearing in his right ear and suffered problems with his balance and bleeding on the brain.

Mary Moloney and Michelle Martin of Stacks/Goudkamp took up the case. The employer of the security guard, the Bumble Group, would

Jnana’s off to the bar

conGratulationS!

HelPinG an iriSH lad in trouble

not respond to their claims for damages and they had to apply for a default judgement against Bumble and its owner Beajan Haidary from Guildford.

District Court judge Leonard Levy said Patrick did nothing to provoke the assault and “he was an entirely innocent victim” of the bouncer.

The security guard was sentenced to a suspended jail term after he was convicted of assault occasioning actual bodily harm.

The judge awarded Patrick, a steel and metal fabricator, $356,759 compensation as he could no longer work at heights or near dangerous machinery. He suffered forgetfulness, poor concentration and anxiety.

Patrick returned home to Ireland but he may not see all of the award as the security firm went into liquidation immediately after the court decision. Debt collectors are chasing the owner. Mary and Michelle did help get him $38,000 from the Victims Compensation Tribunal.

“It was a frustrating result as Patrick should have received his compensation to take home to Ireland to help him with his physical and mental problems caused by the attack,” Michelle said.

“Apparently Bumble’s insurance refused to cover the payment as the bouncer committed a criminal act which breached the policy.”

Congratulations and best wishes to Jnana Gumbert who leaves Stacks/Goudkamp on August 10 to pursue a career at the NSW Bar.

Jnana left North Sydney Girls High in 2000 and the next year started at the law firm as a paralegal when she was just 18 years old.

She completed her law studies in 2005 and became a director of the firm in 2009.

In 2010 she won highly commended in the Lawyers Weekly Young Gun Award. Jnana is an exceptional and outspoken campaigning lawyer, author of many legal articles, speaker at legal conferences and before government committees.

She is currently NSW Branch President of the Australian Lawyers Alliance.

We all wish her well as a barrister in this exciting new chapter in her successful career.

Josh’s BrUsh With fAMe

Josh Crowther, a lawyer at Stacks/The Law Firm in Taree, hit the headlines this year in a brush with fame when he represented singer Altiyan Childs, winner of the TV talent show The X Factor.

The rock star was nabbed driving near Taree with cannabis and amphetamine in his system.

He pleaded guilty but Josh told the court Altiyan was a “real gentleman” who had no history with drugs.

Josh’s star client had previous form on his driving record but Josh won him a relatively good result – a $600 fine and six months disqualification from driving. But getting good results for rock stars is nothing compared to Josh’s double life.

During the week Josh Crowther is a mild mannered lawyer with Stacks in Taree but at weekends he transforms into a dolphin, a fleet footed half back for his beloved rugby team, the Forster-Tuncurry Dolphins.

Josh’s dilemma is that he’s played with the Dolphins for years but when he took the job with Stacks in Taree last year he found himself surrounded by dedicated fans of the Dolphins’ arch rivals – the Manning River Ratz.

Stacks Taree even sponsors the Ratz, so there was subtle pressure on Josh to switch allegiance.

“Never,” cried Josh. When Josh helped the Dolphins to come from behind to beat the Ratz in last season’s semi-final he had to keep very quiet about it in the office.

“The Ratz and the Dolphins are mortal enemies. It’s the most brutal and fierce game of the year. I could never switch sides,” Josh vowed.

At least Josh is taking a lower profile on the rugby field this season as he completes a Master of Laws degree in Wills and Estates.

Josh playing rugby for the forster-tuncurry dolphins!

Stacks/Goudkamp proudly announced Ruth Hudson was promoted to the position of Associate from July 1.

Ruth has an Honours degree in Law as well as a Bachelor of Communications from Newcastle University.

She joined the firm in 2009 after working for two years as a press officer for World Vision including being on the spot in Indonesia and Thailand after the tsunami.

Ruth has worked on the team bringing a class action against the British government for Australian military veterans of the nuclear bomb tests at Maralinga in the 1950s and 60s.

StackS newS / 4

racinG for cancer

ConneCt With Us

Printed using environmentally friendly papers and inks

Five teams of lawyers and staff from Stacks/Goudkamp joined the City Mile Dash at Barangaroo on June 15 to raise money for cancer research.

Fastest among the Stacks/Goudkamp runners was David Goudkamp followed by Sarah Hay, Alex Kuczerawy and Ruth Hudson.

It was a fun day that raised $125,207 in the fight against cancer. Staff also baked up a Biggest Morning Tea with proceeds going to cancer research.

Hatches, matches & despatchesconGratulationS!

Reece Dodds is the proud father of Levi, his first born with wife Emma. ◊

In May Tim Couch (Port Macquarie) married the love of his life Kyrie. ◊

Cameron Grant (Southern Highlands) tied the knot with ◊ Claire, officiated by his office manager (& celebrant) Rachel Harman!

In March Tony Mitchell (Tweed Heads) received an award from ◊Southern Cross University for his work as the Tweed Gold Coast

Advocate for the “Rising Stars Scholarships Program”.

mileStoneS! Alex Kuczerawy was admitted as a lawyer on July 6. She started • as

the Stack’s law clerk working in the Sydney office and joined Stacks/Goudkamp as a paralegal in 2008. She learned under the supervision of tom goudkamp and Jnana gumbert before moving to Julie Mahony’s

group working on MVA and medical negligence.

Tony Mitchell was appointed to the legal panel for AMP Financial • Planners in May.

Digby Dunn, director of Stacks/The Law Firm in Forster, was elected • president of the Mid North Coast Law Society in May.

Hannah Martin (Taree) turned 21 in June. She celebrated with a big • party at her family home.

On the way...Josh Crowther, Lisa Hollis and Stephanie Bisset all have babies due in »

Sept/Oct. They’re all attending antenatal class together in Taree!

Amy Simpson (Tweed Heads) will be walking down the aisle in »September.

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Justin Stack (left) helps present the cheque to

manning Hospital.

StackS raiSinG money for cHarity

a charity with personal meaningStacks Tweed Heads office does a lot for local charities but a charity that office manager Bruce Charge just committed to is close to his heart.

A Foundation called “Ashton’s Gift” was set up this year to help the grieving of a family who lost their son far too early. Last year 19 year old BMX rider Ashton Venables was killed in a car accident.

His father Andrew had just completed the local Iron Man for the first time and the family’s joy was cruelly snatched away by the tragedy.

Money raised in Ashton’s memory will go towards helping deserving young kids and adults.

The Gift has special resonance for Bruce. His brother Scott was just 23 when he died. It was a devastating blow for Bruce, his parents and three brothers.

“The Founders of “Ashton’s Gift”, Andrew and Sharon, are part of our local running group,” Bruce said. “They are just nice people and very community minded.”

bruce chargeOffice Manager - Tweed Heads

Stacks/The Law Firm, Taree supported an Easter Golden Slipper Race Day fundraiser that raised $5,567 for the oncology unit at Manning Hospital.

Guests came dressed in yellow or pink representing men’s and women’s cancer. Justin Stack helped present the cheque to the hospital.

LAWYERSon the rUn

Bears roar At finAls

The Stacks/Goudkamp Bears roared into the women’s wheelchair basketball grand final against the reigning champion Dandenong Rangers played in Melbourne.

It was already a huge achievement for the Bears to make it to the grand final – the first time in five years.

The Bears beat Perth’s Western Stars 64 - 36 in the semi-finals and they knew they’d be in a tough contest against the Victorian team on their home turf.

It was a tough game and the Rangers were too good on the day winning 78 – 39.

The Bears were proud runners-up and several of their members will be off to the London Paralympics. Stacks/Goudkamp is proud to sponsor the Bears.

RIGHT: A milestone for Alex Kuczerawy of

Stacks/Goudkamp, admitted as a lawyer on 6th July -

congratulations Alex!