Contributing editor-at-large Tess Lawrence now has some hefty legal muscle on her side to even the odds in her epic seven-year court battle against the National Australia Bank.
In a dramatic power shift in her fight against the National Australia Bank and the McKean Park Solicitors bankruptcy, Melbourne based high-profile solicitors Lewenberg and Lewenberg will now be representing journalist Tess Lawrence, Independent Australia’s contributing editor-at-large.
In what is believed to be a legal first in Victoria for a non-lawyer defendant, after a seven year gruelling battle against the NAB, three of them in the Supreme Court of Victoria where she never missed a day, pitched against the NAB’s formidable legal artillery, his Honour Justice David Beach set the Trial date for 26 September 2011 — a triumph for Lawrence and self-representing litigants everywhere.
But the Trial was to end up proceeding in Lawrence’s absence through PTSD and other illness, triggered by an alleged death threat and attempt to get her to change her evidence by lawyer Richard Ashley of McKean Park Solicitors on 9 May 2011 in the Melbourne Magistrates’ Court, where Lawrence was seeking a rehearing into an alleged debt.
McKean Park Solicitors subsequently bankrupted Lawrence in Court proceedings conducted in her absence through illness — that very absence and illness being caused by them.
In both cases, Lawrence provided all parties and the Courts with medical certificates and psychological reports.
Lawrence’s claims are contained in a Sworn Affidavit for the Trial prepared for her by lawyer Phil Grano, from the Office of the Public Advocate and in other Affidavits and Pleadings, evidence and documentation.
