Clive Evatt: King of the Plaintiffs’ Defamation Bar
Clive Andreas Evatt, barrister and Renaissance man, died on Friday, August 3. Born in 1931, he was the only son of Clive Raleigh Evatt, QC, a famous barrister and a minister in a number of state governments, and Marjorie Hannah Andreas, the daughter of a prominent businessman. Evatt jnr’s uncle was Dr H.V. Evatt, a former High Court Justice. His sister Elizabeth won the university medal for law and became the first chief judge of the Family Court of Australia. His sister Penelope took a different course, marrying the famous architect Harry Seidler and later becoming an architect herself.
Given the family background in the law, it was almost inevitable that Evatt jnr would become a barrister. But law was never his only interest. During his university days, he developed a passionate interest in opera and ballet, literature and classical music and paintings. After leaving university, he also began betting on horses and was extraordinarily successful, winning a seven-figure sum in the period 1960-1976, equivalent to many millions of dollars today. In 1972, he opened the avant garde Hogarth Gallery, which largely pioneered the sale of Aboriginal paintings in Sydney.
Evatt was admitted to the bar in 1956. “Young Clive” (as he was known in recognition of his father) remained an institution at the Sydney defamation bar until his death. Experienced practitioners knew that beneath his disarming exterior, behind the injured wildebeest appearance of the shuffling old man with a cane, lay a uniquely dangerous opponent.
More than any counsel of his era, Evatt knew how to strip his case back to the barest essentials, paring away everything unnecessary to his client’s success before the jury. With unsettling frankness and a mischievous glint in his eye, he was unembarrassed about abandoning any part of his case on which the witnesses were not “coming up to proof”.
Evatt’s preferred approach to the notorious technical complexity of the law of defamation was not to engage with it. In pre-trial applications in the Defamation List, his favourite response to thorny arguments raised for the defendant was, “Well, there’s a lot for your honour to think about there” — effectively shifting to the court the obligation to answer the point.