Posts by Russell Brown
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Hard News: Behaving badly at the bottom…, in reply to Kumara Republic,
The predictable unintended consequence of buying one’s name suppression with a big fat chequebook – guilt by association.
It's worth reiterating that the order wasn't bought "with a big fat chequebook". It was requested by an ordinary duty solicitor in the course of a very standard morning in court.
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Hard News: Behaving badly at the bottom…, in reply to Graeme Edgeler,
I cannot see the reason for a judge alone trial being anything other than “the trial is likely to take three months, and the chance that with a jury that it would be more complicated, and take longer, and possibly have to be abandoned would be substantially higher than normal”.
Pretty good guess. It seems the defence argued in its turn that decisions made by a judge only would be less readily accepted.
It does strike me that the judge could have revealed more of his reasoning, even if only by structuring the text of the original decision to facilitate that course.
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Hard News: Behaving badly at the bottom…, in reply to giovanni tiso,
Coupled with the jibe about Morse's 'hyperventilating' press release, by pointing out that the prosecution is a recipe for martyrdom you are shifting who is being victimised here from the defendants to the public.
Okay, I don't want a scrap, honest. I did think Morse's statement was OTT, and I disapprove of what I understand to be her actions in this case. But we'll let the court sort that out.
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Hard News: Behaving badly at the bottom…, in reply to giovanni tiso,
The “now the Uruwera 18 will be martyred and they don’t deserve it”, which was the tenor of a very ungeneorous tweet of Craig’s after the news came out, is something I could have personally done without from you too, Russell. It’s not about either of you, you know?
And yet you seem to be suggesting it is. I don’t really understand that comment. I made no comment about whether they're "deserving" or not, because it seems pointless to try and do so.
But I think it’s a straightforward and valid point: in denying the accused the right to be tried by a jury of their peers, the judge has ensured that a fairly substantial part of the public will not regard any verdict as valid. He has locked in a permanent, and justified, grievance against the system.
I don’t see where it’s my job to be “generous” by pretending otherwise.
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That Herald editorial ... it's one thing for the paper to take an editorial position. Quite another for the actual argument offered to be as feeble and petulant as that.
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Just rode over to Miller Street. It's lovely, with more of a crazy folk-art feel than Franklin Road -- especially number 58. Feels like the place we live.
Merry Christmas, all.
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Hard News: Wikileaks: The Cable Guys, in reply to Seriatim,
A few days ago in this thread RB explained that he felt that all the attention that was going onto Julian Assange would damage Wikileaks. This hadn’t occurred to me. However after considerable thought I still can’t see how this could be so. In what way is this attention harmful?
Did you miss how his lawyers' response to the rape charges opened a chasm on the liberal left? It's been nasty out there, and Pilger's blathering about "the false tribunes of feminism" hasn't helped.
Or the fact that a number of close colleagues have split away from him this year, with one referring to him as a "slave trader"?
Or that Nick Davies, the very good investigative journalist who brought Assange to The Guardian, now refuses to work with him?
None of that is damaging at all?
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Hard News: A few (more) words on The Hobbit, in reply to giovanni tiso,
He keeps talking about Warners as them, you know, other people. Yet we find out they bankrolled the legal team for an employment court action against Three Foot Six which is owned by… Peter Jackson. Right.
Three Foot Six was a company formed for the sole purpose of producing the LOTR films and is listed in all the documents I can find as being 100% owned by New Line Cinema. Three Foot Seven seems to be constituted on a similar basis to make the Hobbit films. So, yes, Warners is "them" in that sense.
They paid for the lawyers because they owned the company named in the action. For his part, Bryson was bankrolled by the CTU, which allowed him to take the case to the Supreme Court after failing to convince the Employment authority and the High Court.
The law change had nothing to to do with the blacklisting itself -- the actors didn't want to change their status as contractors. But it's not hard to imagine that Warners saw the CTU get involved in a precipitate and unorthodox industrial action and got nervous about stability. I think they were wrong, but that's probably what they were thinking.
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Hard News: A few (more) words on The Hobbit, in reply to giovanni tiso,
And if you say well it doesn’t matter, because almost everyone is in fact happy with being treated like a contractor, then I’d have to ask – why change the law?
In the original post for this thread, I actually expressed that view.
OTOH, the employment law specialist I interviewed on Media7 thought the law did need clarifying and said there were a number of other examples of such amendments for other employment sectors.
Anyway, the point was that Bryson’s contract was unusual and the decision can’t be generally applied to the industry. I think the Supreme Court felt moved to say so in its decision.
Anyway, I'm having a shit day and the language in this discussion has become so loaded that I really don't wish to continue it.
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Hard News: A few (more) words on The Hobbit, in reply to giovanni tiso,
As far as I can tell (not being an employment law nerd), that case came out of a contact that was – to put it mildly – a dog’s dinner and pretty much all the informed commentary I’ve seen has been reluctant to spin out a general precedent from a highly specific set of circumstances
I don’t know where you have found this informed commentary, but it squares with exactly none of what I’ve read. To pick more or less at random, here’s a blog post from the Cullen employment Law firm which says just the opposite of what you just said.
If you’re implying that it says Bryson was a general precedent, or that his was a typical contract, it actually says the opposite of that:
Overall the Employment Court found that the expression of industry concerns, while relevant to the parties’ intentions, were “overstated” in Mr Bryson’s situation.
His work was distinct from normal industry practice. He had not been working on other projects for several producers. He had no investment in plant or equipment and had not operated as a sole trader.
The court found that Mr Bryson was not an independent contractor. Rather he was an employee. There was no evidence to say he had been acting as a separate business entity. He did not tender for his position. He was in a long-term position and entered the job with no relevant experience for the new position. He cannot have been said to be contracting his skills to Three Foot Six.
The fact that the contract said he was an independent contractor did not mean that he was. The contract read as though Mr Bryson was an employee despite its statement otherwise. Indeed there was a significant amount of company control.
It was an unusual contract drawn up at a time when Weta’s HR was struggling to cope with the company’s growth. Even so, successive courts all the way up to the Supreme Court, took different views on Bryson’s claim. I don’t have time to find the various decisions, but iirc they were quite clear that it didn’t embody a general precedent for the industry.
Or, as ScreenHub put it:
The only people who seemed to believe this could create a precedent applicable to actors were the CTU, which funded the Bryson action. Warner Brothers also joined that party, making it possibly the only thing the two sides have felt similarly about in recent weeks.
I’m not sure what you’ve been reading that says Bryson was a industry precedent rather than an unusual case, but it’s certainly not my understanding.