Language – Lays the Ghost

This idiom is defined by the Cambridge Dictionary (Online) as ‘to finally stop being worried or upset about something that has worried or upset you for a long time’.

The Collins Dictionary (Online) defines the idiom as ‘to do something which stops you from being upset or affected by something bad in your past: Jockey Jack Kennedy laid the ghost of a ghastly week with a comprehensive win in the Irish Champion Hurdle yesterday’.

LexisNexis + (Online) says:

The phrase ‘lays the ghost’ in the Australian legal context often refers to resolving ambiguities or uncertainties in legal interpretation, particularly in statutory or contractual construction. 

Use of the idiom in case law is as follows:

• In Cameron v Cole (1944) 68 CLR 571 at 589, per Rich J:

It is a fundamental principle of natural justice, applicable to all courts whether superior or inferior, that a person against whom a claim or charge is made must be given a reasonable opportunity of appearing and presenting his case. If this principle be not observed, the person affected is entitled, ex debito justitiae, to have any determination which affects him set aside; and a court which finds that it has been led to purport to determine a matter in which there has been a failure to observe the principle has inherent jurisdiction to set its determination aside (Craig v Kanssen [1943] 1 KB 256 at 262). In such a case there has been no valid trial at all. The setting aside of the invalid determination lays the ghost of the simulacrum of a trial, and leaves the field open for a real trial (Crane v DPP [1921] 2 AC 299 at 332–3).

• In John Pfeiffer Pty Ltd v Rogerson (2000) 203 CLR 503 at [113], per Kirby J:

As La Forest J observed, ‘[a] all the social considerations which might favour the approach ‘are now gone’ [1994] 3 SCR 1022 at 1055 … yet the ghost of Phillips v Eyre continues to walk, extracting a measure of loyalty in many jurisdictions.  The time has come to lay that ghost to rest so far as the several Australian jurisdictions … are concerned’.