Rafailidis v Camden Council [2021] NSWSC 1087 features the following comment on drafting
The summary of the claims made by the plaintiffs in their statement of claim that is set out above is not adequate to convey a true sense of the extent and complexity of the allegations made by the plaintiffs. It is a reasonably adequate record of how almost all of the plaintiffs’ claims depend upon and rehearse the allegations of fraudulent conduct by Mr Krillic, Mr Kashro and Mr McIntyre. Those allegations of fraudulent conduct are a constant thread that the plaintiffs weave through all of their claims. The plaintiffs not only claim that the defendant prosecuted all of the proceedings in the Land and Environment Court to further the fraudulent aims of its officers, but, in addition, that the defendant concealed the fraud from the Court. The statement of claim is replete with allegations that the conduct of the defendant – most of which could not practicably be individually identified in the outline set out above – constituted either malicious prosecution or a wide range of dishonourable conduct on the part of the defendant.
26 I have not been able, in the summary, to convey the extent, the complexity, the obscurity, or the level of repetition in the particulars provided, for a majority of the allegations made by the plaintiffs. The only way to approach an understanding of the statement of claim is to attempt to read it; but the document largely defies comprehension, and the reader will almost certainly be lost before reaching the middle of the document. The person who drafted the particulars may have thought that the plaintiffs were obliged to explain in seemingly endless detail the reasoning in support of their claims. In a substantial proportion of cases, the result has been that the particulars are not readily comprehensible, as they require reference to other sources of information, and they are in any event argumentative.
27 I am satisfied that an order should be made striking out the statement of claim in its entirety. Any legitimate claims that may reside in the statement of claim are obscured by a thicket of impermissible and obscure allegations and submissions, most of which are not limited to the material facts relevant to any particular cause of action. There is a very substantial level of repetition. The result is that the statement of claim cannot be understood on the basis of a careful reading. A minute analysis is required to attempt the task, and the result is the production of summaries of the individual claims that, at the one time, do not record the full extent of the allegations made, and also do not permit an adequate understanding of the collective effect of the allegations. The level of unnecessary and irrelevant detail and repetition defeats a conscientious attempt to gain an adequate, fair and balanced understanding of the claims made by the plaintiffs.
28 Furthermore, the mixture of prayers seeking the setting aside of orders of the Land and Environment Court, with a substantial number of claims strewn throughout the pleading for declarations as to the effect of matters dealt with by that Court, along with a welter of disconnected allegations of wrongdoing by the defendant, impose on both the defendant and the Court an oppressive task of discrimination between claims that may be justiciable in this Court, and claims that are not.
29 The statement of claim is, in my opinion, within that relatively extreme category where its deficiencies defeat any reasonable attempt at analysis and segregation of the good from the bad, so that the proper course for the Court to take is to strike out the statement of claim in its entirety.
30 I have not attempted to match the myriad of pleading deficiencies in the statement of claim with the individual pleading rules accepted by McCallum J in Seidler. That would be an entirely senseless exercise, as, in various combinations, many of the deficiencies identified by her Honour applied to nearly every one of the allegations made in the statement of claim.
Deficiencies in the manner in which fraud is pleaded against the defendant
31 There is a further fundamental deficiency in the statement of claim, which separately justifies an order that it be struck out in its entirety. That is that, in my view, substantially the whole of the claims made are dependent upon allegations of fraud that have not been properly pleaded, and are fundamentally oppressive to the defendant, and unfair to the officers of the defendant against whom the allegations have been made.
