Rob and Fern Messenger filed ‘acres of irrelevant and scandalous materials’ throughout trial, court docket finds
Two of Senator Jacqui Lambie’s former staffers have been ordered to pay the commonwealth authorities nearly $100,000 for his or her unreasonableconduct in an unfair dismissal trial by which a decide discovered they tried to smear the senator.
Ex-chief of employees Rob Messenger and his spouse, Fern, who managed the senator’s workplaces, have been sacked for allegedserious misconduct in 2017 after Messenger despatched a letter to the prime minister about alleged inappropriate office behaviour.
After being fired, they launched unfair dismissal claims in opposition to Lambie within the federal court docket.
The Messengers represented themselves within the case, which took 5 years to resolve. Justice John Snaden dismissed their claims in June 2022.
The commonwealth authorities’s attendance over the 16-day trial value it about $200,0000, and it utilized to the court docket to have the Messengers pay their prices.
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The Messengers filed greater than 1,000 pages of pointless proof in 2019, an important bulk of which was irrelevant, the court docket discovered.
The court docket was additionally requested by the Messengers to problem subpoenas to numerous potential witnesses who had no reference to the case, which added to the commonwealth’s authorized prices.
The federal government claimed it was unreasonable for the Messengers to have spent a lot time adducing “irrelevant or scandalous” proof and stated they used the trial as a “broad-ranging judicial inquiry into” Lambie’s character or trial by media.
Snaden discovered the Messengers’ conduct throughout the case was unreasonable and ordered every of them pay the commonwealth $47,300.
“I settle for that the trial was prolonged unreasonably by the Messengers’ insistence on exploring issues that bore no reference to something that that they had pleaded,” he wrote in a judgment on Wednesday.
“Self-represented litigants are usually not at liberty to waste their opponents’ (and the court docket’s) time by requiring that they sift by and take into account – and, as right here, oppose – acres of irrelevant and scandalous materials.”
Witnesses subpoenaed by the Messengers included senior political figures, journalists and members of Lambie’s household.
The decide stated their presence was sought at trial to “smear” the senator.
Lambie’s utility for prices was dismissed, as Snaden discovered the Messengers’ rejection of her provide of six weeks’ pay to resolve the case was not unreasonable.
Rob Messenger was a state Liberal Nationwide occasion MP in Queensland earlier than quitting the occasion in 2010 to characterize Burnett as an unbiased. He was defeated on the following election in 2012.
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