Obituary & Service - Professor Francis Trindade

Francis’s secondary education was at St Patrick’s School, Karachi. He graduated LL B (Karachi), MA (Oxon) and Dip Comparative Law (Strasbourg). He was admitted to the Bar of England & Wales (Gray’s Inn) in February 1963. He was an Assistant Lecturer, then Lecturer, in Law at the University of Singapore; then settled in Australia in 1966 coming to Monash as a Lecturer in Law. In 1987, he was appointed to the Sir Owen Dixon Chair in Law.

His principal area of teaching and research was the Law of Torts. He co-authored with Peter Cane (previously Professor at Oxford; then at the ANU; now at Cambridge) The Law of Torts in Australia (1985 Oxford University Press) through three editions: 1985, 1993 and 1999. He also co-authored with the late Tun Mohamed Suffian (then Lord President of Malaysia’s Federal Judiciary) and H P Lee The Constitution of Malaysia – Its Development 1957-77 (1978 Oxford University Press); and with H P Lee the 1986 successor volume on Further Perspectives and Developments.

He maintained ties with Oxford – a Sabbatical Visitor at Balliol College and a Visiting Fellow at Corpus Christi College; and he was a Visiting Professor of Law at the National University of Singapore.

Francis signed the Victorian Bar Roll in November 1993; and split his Reading between Leslie Glick (now QC) and Jeremy Ruskin (now QC). He transferred to the Academics List in March 1995 but maintained a Practising Certificate through the 2000/01 year. He transferred to the List of Retired Counsel in June 2004.

Francis retired from Monash in September 2002; was granted Emeritus status; and continued to teach on a sessional basis until mid-2007.

Click here to view the Victorian Bar Tributes Notice from The Age.