In his relentless search for items of interest, at times verging on the bizarre, our Shipping Reporter made a discovery which has turned him into a budding bush lawyer.
It is the 2003 fourth edition of Torts, by Martin Davies and Ian Malkin, designed to explain the concepts of Torts for Australian law students.
As luck would have it , the book appears to have once belonged to someone in the multinational law firm , MinterEllison , the biggest in Australia .
Apart from underlining of text in various colours and margin notes , there are MinterEllison sticky notes attached to various interesting cases, with handwritten comments .
Our waterfront roundsman , who does have an obvious twisted sense of humour, almost became hysterical with laughter while reading details of a case in which a one armed man was badly injured by a faulty fondue set provided by a friend at a house warming party.
The kind host, identified as Denny , had bought the second hand fondue set at a flea market as well as an uninsulated set of six metal spearing forks. He invited former housemates to come to his first fondue party in his new flat dressed as singing stars of the 70s .
One of the revellers, named Benny, a large person , who had recently lost his right arm , after drinking several margaritas , experienced difficulties using the spears on the hot, bubbling fondue components, the cheese seemingly seething like lava in an imminent volcanic eruption .
He received serious burns when a spark set fire to his polyester suit , his synthetic beard and wig , the latter two apparently part of his jolly party outfit !!!
The flames also set fire to Denny's orange nylon shag pile carpet . Benny sued Denny for damages due to failure of duty of care , knowing about shortcomings in the dangerous fondue set and spears .
In discussing the case, Torts cited Romeo v Conservation Commission of the Northern Territory (l998) where the High Court held the defendant had not been negligent despite its failure to fence off a cliff or put up warning signs to guard against the foreseeable risk that someone (like the plaintiff) , labouring under impairment of senses , might fall over the cliff .
The tasty Torts book and another on documents that shaped Australia were unearthed in Townsville by our scavenging Shipping Reporter.
(Torts, Fondue, Romeo.)
