Joanne’s Story

Joanne is an indigenous woman getting by on Centrelink payments, and her only asset is the house she lives in with her two children.

Joanne has difficulty reading and writing, so she was very confused when one day she received a letter and court documents from a lawyer.

Joanne tried to contact some law firms in her local area, but she couldn’t afford legal advice and nobody would help her. Joanne attended a drop-in advice clinic at another community legal centre. They couldn’t provide ongoing help, so they connected Joanne to our State Courts office.

It turns out that someone had sued her in the Magistrates Court for damage caused by a car accident. The Plaintiff had managed to get a default judgment against Joanne for $13,000 without Joanne’s knowledge and was threatening to start enforcement proceedings. Joanne couldn’t pay the $13,000 and risked losing her house. What’s more, she hadn’t even been the driver at the time of the accident – her brother had borrowed her car and was driving at the time of the accident.

Through several appointments with LawRight’s State Courts office, we helped Joanne to file multiple court documents to apply to set aside the default judgment and defend the claim against her. LawRight staff, secondee and volunteer lawyers helped Joanne understand the court process, drafted her court documents, gave her east to follow step by step instructions about what she needed to do to file and serve her court documents, and talked her through attending court hearings.

After Joanne put her defence before the Court, the Plaintiff agreed to completely drop the proceedings against her and pay their own legal costs..

Joanne's Story

Joanne’s Story