Kevin Borick, QC is a criminal-law barrister in South Australia, and president of the Australian Criminal Lawyers Association.
His notable cases include:
Mabo v Queensland was a landmark High Court of Australia decision in 1992 recognising native title in Australia for the first time.
Punitive damages, or exemplary damages, are damages assessed in order to punish the defendant for outrageous conduct and/or to reform or deter the defendant and others from engaging in conduct similar to that which formed the basis of the lawsuit. Although the purpose of punitive damages is not to compensate the plaintiff, the plaintiff will receive all or some of the punitive damages award.
HIV/AIDS denialism is the belief, contradicted by conclusive evidence, that human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) does not cause acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS). Some of its proponents reject the existence of HIV, while others accept that HIV exists but argue that it is a harmless passenger virus and not the cause of AIDS. Insofar as they acknowledge AIDS as a real disease, they attribute it to some combination of sexual behavior, recreational drugs, malnutrition, poor sanitation, haemophilia, or the effects of the medications used to treat HIV infection (antiretrovirals).
Native title is the designation given to the common law doctrine of Aboriginal title in Australia, which is "the recognition by Australian law that Aboriginal people have rights and interests to their land that come from their traditional laws and customs". The concept recognises that in certain cases there was and is a continued beneficial legal interest in land held by local Aboriginal Australians which survived the acquisition of radical title to the land by the Crown at the time of sovereignty. Native title can co-exist with non-Aboriginal proprietary rights and in some cases different Aboriginal groups can exercise their native title over the same land.
Australian constitutional law is the area of the law of Australia relating to the interpretation and application of the Constitution of Australia. Several major doctrines of Australian constitutional law have developed.
Criminal transmission of HIV is the intentional or reckless infection of a person with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). This is often conflated, in laws and in discussion, with criminal exposure to HIV, which does not require the transmission of the virus and often, as in the cases of spitting and biting, does not include a realistic means of transmission. Some countries or jurisdictions, including some areas of the U.S., have enacted laws expressly to criminalize HIV transmission or exposure, charging those accused with criminal transmission of HIV. Others, including the United Kingdom, charge the accused under existing laws with such crimes as murder, fraud (Canada), manslaughter, attempted murder, or assault.
Dietrich v The Queen is an important legal case decided in the High Court of Australia on 13 November 1992, stemming from an incident that took place on 17 December 1986. It concerned the nature of the right to a fair trial/and under what circumstances indigent defendants should be provided with legal aid by the state. The case determined that although there is no absolute right to have publicly funded counsel, a judge should grant any request for an adjournment or stay in most circumstances in which an accused is unrepresented. It is an important case in Australian criminal law and in Australian constitutional law since it is one of many cases in which some members of the High Court have found implied human rights in the Australian Constitution.
In contract law, rescission is an equitable remedy which allows a contractual party to cancel the contract. Parties may rescind if they are the victims of a vitiating factor, such as misrepresentation, mistake, duress, or undue influence. Rescission is the unwinding of a transaction. This is done to bring the parties, as far as possible, back to the position in which they were before they entered into a contract.
Johnson Aziga is a Ugandan-born Canadian man formerly residing in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, notable as the first person to be charged and convicted of first-degree murder in Canada for spreading HIV, after two women whom he had infected without their knowledge died.
R v Cuerrier was a 1998 decision by the Supreme Court of Canada, which ruled that knowingly exposing a sexual partner to HIV constitutes a prosecutable crime under Canadian law.
In criminal law, consent may be used as an excuse and prevent the defendant from incurring liability for what was done.
Complicity is the participation in a completed criminal act of an accomplice, a partner in the crime who aids or encourages (abets) other perpetrators of that crime, and who shared with them an intent to act to complete the crime. A person is an accomplice of another person in the commission of a crime if they purpose the completion of a crime, and toward that end, if that person solicits or encourages the other person, or aids or attempts to aid in planning or committing the crime, or has legal duty to prevent that crime but fails to properly make an effort to prevent it.
Henry Vincent Keogh is an Australian who was convicted of murder but was eventually released twenty years later on appeal. He grew up in Adelaide, South Australia and was educated at Saint Ignatius College and briefly at the School of Dentistry at The University of Adelaide.
Andre Chad Parenzee is an HIV-positive Australian man convicted of three counts of endangering human life by exposing others to the risk of infection through unprotected sex as he claimed to them that he was HIV seronegative. In one instance he actually transmitted the virus.
William Robert Wood is a UK-born Australian who has campaigned on peace and justice issues. He was elected to the Australian Parliament in the 1987 elections as Senator for New South Wales, however the High Court subsequently declared his election was invalid as he was not an Australian citizen at the time.
Michael Rozenes is the former Chief Judge of the County Court of Victoria, an intermediate court in Victoria, Australia. He presided over the County Court for thirteen years, retiring in June 2015.
The Catholic Church has been involved in the care of HIV/AIDS patients since the earliest days of the pandemic. As one of the largest providers of care on the planet, it treats those who are sick, helps to stop the transmission, offers pastoral care to those who are infected, and cares for orphans whose parents have died of the disease. Much of the church's work is focused on the developing world, though programs exist in the Global North as well.
The criminal transmission of HIV in the United States varies among jurisdictions. More than thirty of the fifty states in the U.S. have prosecuted HIV-positive individuals for exposing another person to HIV. State laws criminalize different behaviors and assign different penalties. While pinpointing who infected whom is scientifically impossible, a person diagnosed with HIV who is accused of infecting another while engaging in sexual intercourse is, in many jurisdictions, automatically committing a crime. A person donating HIV-infected organs, tissues, and blood can be prosecuted for transmitting the virus. Spitting or transmitting HIV-infected bodily fluids is a criminal offense in some states, particularly if the target is a prison guard. Some states treat the transmission of HIV, depending upon a variety of factors, as a felony and others as a misdemeanor.
The AIDS Law Project of Pennsylvania is a nonprofit, public-interest law firm that provides free legal service to individuals living with and affected by HIV and AIDS. Founded in 1988, it is the only public interest law firm in the nation that is exclusively dedicated to helping those with HIV and AIDS. AIDS Law Project is headquartered in Philadelphia with an additional office in Southern New Jersey.
McGinty v Western Australia, was a significant case decided in the High Court of Australia in 1996. It concerned a challenge by the Western Australia Labor Party leader Jim McGinty of the 1996 election results on the basis of malapportionment. The plaintiffs sought to enshrine the principle of ‘one vote one value’ in the Australian Constitution, and has had a significant impact on how the High Court approaches matters of the franchise, as well as malapportionment. The plaintiff's submissions were unanimously rejected by the court, who found that the interpretation of sections 7 and 24 of the Australian Constitution did not require that all votes hold the same value. The High Court exercised its original jursidiction in hearing the matter, and the case did not need to proceed from an appeal to the Western Australian