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Having found it amounted to an abuse of process, a senior judge has tossed a solicitor’s attempts to join a construction company to a complex costs dispute that involves long-term clients, an incarcerated man, and a mysterious benefactor.
NSW solicitor Julie Orsini has lost a bid to join a construction company that paid her legal bills to a costs fight she has filed against two longstanding clients and a connection of theirs who required her assistance with a criminal law and family law matter.
In throwing out Orsini’s application and an attempt to file an amended summons, Justice Gregory Sirtes of the NSW Supreme Court said Orsini’s case turned on her failure to join the company, Rawson Constructions, to the first of two costs assessments.
The new proceedings also concerned “precisely the same facts”.
“For these reasons, the plaintiff’s application to join Rawson Constructions is an abuse of process and must be refused. To do otherwise would be inconsistent with the overriding purpose and the objects of case management,” Justice Sirtes said.
Orsini had been representing her long-term clients since 2009 on approximately 25 matters before she was introduced to criminal and family law client, George Habambo, in about October 2020.
That same month, Orsini had entered into costs agreements with the two long-term clients, their two companies, and Habambo.
Following receipt of the first invoice, she was asked to reissue it to Rawson Constructions, which went on to pay approximately $350,000. The exact nature of Rawson Constructions and its relationship with the other defendants is unclear on the evidence.
Justice Sirtes said in his written reasons that the evidence did not explain how Orsini came to accept substantial payments “from a client with which she had no apparent prior dealing, nor why she did not inquire of the defendants as to its identity”.
As far as she was concerned, the company was a “stranger”.
Over the next two years, Orsini billed about $826,000.
Following Habambo’s conviction, the relationship between Orsini and the defendants broke down, with the result being Rawson Constructions declining to pay any subsequent invoices.
Orsini applied for a costs assessment against the five defendants, which found the sole person responsible for her fees was Habambo and that the long-term clients had only been paying his costs to “assist him, [and] not out of any legal obligation”.
The amount owed was reduced, consistent with “lack of detail in the items within the invoice, excessive time claimed for certain tasks and costs claimed for communicating” with the long-term clients.
A review of these costs was refused.
Justice Sirtes found Orsini’s omission of Rawson Constructions in the initial proceedings was concerning in circumstances where, as she disclosed in her own material, it paid 90 per cent of her fees.
The senior judge also noted Orsini had acknowledged the extent of her own ignorance concerning Rawson Constructions.
“The notion that she could establish some form of binding legal obligation for it to pay fees (over and above what she has already received) is fanciful,” Justice Sirtes said.
“Where a client pays its legal fees using money borrowed from a family member, a bank, or some other source, and that money passes directly from the lender to the solicitor, it does not follow that the lender thereby incurs any liability to the solicitor.
“I need not say anything further about this issue.”
Citation: Orsini v Taouk [2026] NSWSC 621.
