Natural justice and the coroner

In R v Doogan (2005) 158 ACTR 1; 193 FLR 239; [2005] ACTSC 74 the Full Court of the Australian Capital Territory Supreme Court made what is arguably thus far the most extensive Australian appellate decision on coronial law and procedure. The court made findings on the nature of coroners' inquests into fires and deaths, the ways in which the parameters of inquests should be determined and the circumstances in which the conduct of coroners and the counsel assisting them could amount to conduct which would lead the hypothetical disinterested bystander to conclude that the coroner was biased. The decision is a contextually sophisticated analysis. One of its consequences is that it will be difficult for parties to have coroners disqualified for apprehended bias. More generally, though, the decision will lend significant assistance for the recurrent difficulty of evaluating when matters sought to be traversed are outside the proper parameters of a coroner's inquest.