The suspension decision was made in March this year, the day after the board received a charge sheet that alleged Tricarico had the intent to pervert the course of justice in February 2019 by instructing a person to delete content from their mobile phone.

The case is still before the Melbourne Magistrates Court.

In submissions made to the Victorian Supreme Court in April, the board claimed a delegate could validly form an opinion that it was necessary in the public interest to immediately suspend a practising certificate “to the exclusion of advance notice being required”.

However, Justice Peter Gray did not agree that the requirements of procedural fairness are then limited in all circumstances “to the express statutory avenues in the Uniform Law” in such a way that it removed any requirement of the board to provide advanced notice.

Turning to his own view of the circumstances, Justice Gray said the suspension decision should have required “great care”.

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“The information before the delegate consisted of nothing more than the charge-sheet unsupported by any statement or evidence of any kind … [and] there was no way of assessing whether there was a prospect the charge might in due course be proven,” Justice Gray said.

The court also considered the “serious and perhaps irreparable effects” of the decision on Tricarico’s legal practice.

While an immediate suspension without notice may have been justified if the board had evidence there was a “real danger” of similar conduct occurring again, Justice Gray said it was “far from the case here”.

“A suspension of a practising certificate before giving the holder an opportunity to respond is inherently unfair to that person.

“The potential for redress via the avenues of post-suspension representations, de novo appeal and stay ameliorate the inherent unfairness of a suspension without notice to some extent, but not completely,” Justice Gray said.

Justice Gray was satisfied that the outcome may have been different had the delegate given Tricarico the opportunity to persuade him against the immediate decision. It was likely the board could have arrived at imposing conditions on the certificate or accepted an undertaking.

Turning to the standard of legal reasonableness, Justice Gray said the delegate “had only a flimsy basis for making the decision”.

More significantly, Justice Gray said there was no urgency in the sense of any imminent risk of conduct occurring in the future.

“Confidence in the justice system is not so brittle and fragile a thing that only an immediate suspension would do,” Justice Gray said.

“On the contrary, a cogent argument could be made that a rush to impose an immediate suspension without notice might well undermine confidence in the justice system and in the system for regulation of practitioners.”

The case: Tricarico v Victorian Legal Services Board (No 2) [2025] VSC 242 (7 May 2025)