Suppose a Court Registrar/Clerk issues an enforcement instrument against a party to enforce a judgment debt, but the Court later rules that this instrument was invalidly issued (i.e., the Registrar/Clerk should not have issued it). To be clear, this is not just a snafu in the paperwork --- for various technical legal reasons, the Court rules that this type of instrument cannot be validly issued against this party at all (even though it was, in fact, issued against them). The applicant for that instrument relied on it, and suffers loss as a result of its invalidity. (If the applicant had known it was invalid, he would have sought other enforcement methods in the meantime, but that opportunity has now been lost.)
Can the plaintiff sue the Court Registrar/Clerk (which issued the invalid instrument) for negligence, or on some other cause-of-action? Does the Registrar/Clerk have any form of judicial immunity that would alter the standard position of a suit for negligence? Also, in a negligence suit of this kind, would it be expected that the Court Registrar/Clerk has the duty of care to only issue valid instruments, or would it be expected that the applicant is the one that bears the onus of determining validity of the instrument issued at his request?
Jurisdiction of interest: Interested in any common-law jurisdiction, but mostly interested in Federal Court in Australia.
