Nine months prison for Markham Moore-McQuillan, who has abused, spat at, tripped and threatened a string of lawyers during a 28-year bitter crusade against WorkCover
A SERIAL litigant who has assaulted a string of lawyers during a bitter, protracted and often explosive crusade against WorkCover will spend the next nine months in jail, after a judge ruled he had run out of chances.
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- 2008: Foul-mouthed litigant jailed after 19 years
- 2009: Man swears 93 times in one half-hour SA court hearing
A MAN who assaulted numerous lawyers in a bitter and often explosive crusade against WorkCover has been jailed for nine months after a judge ruled his chances had run out.
Markham Moore-McQuillan has been convicted of assault at least seven times during a morass of litigation against WorkCover spanning almost three decades.
Moore-McQuillan, 59, has abused, tripped, spat at and threatened lawyers – and threw a walking crutch at a bailiff who served him a summons – since hurting his knee working 28 years ago.
District Court judge Joanne Tracey ruled that Moore-McQuillan’s violent courtroom outbursts had left her no option but to jail him over an incident in an Adelaide Magistrates Court defamation case in December 2015.
Moore-McQuillan was several years ago the subject of an application by the Attorney-General to declare him a vexatious litigant and pleaded guilty to aggravated assault of an opposing solicitor and breaching bail conditions not to harass court staff.
“You assaulted (the lawyer) by accosting her and impeding her in a threatening manner,” Judge Tracey said.
“The Sheriff’s officer intervened. During your interaction with (him) you shouted loudly, again using coarse language and attempted to resist (him).”
Judge Tracey said the victims of Moore-McQuillan’s outbursts were “almost exclusively” WorkCover lawyers or those representing opponents.
In 2000, he was convicted of spitting at a WorkCover barrister, then spent two months in jail for assaulting another lawyer in 2002.
Despite the prison stint, Moore-McQuillan threw his crutch at a man serving him a summons, cutting his chin in 2007 and the next year received a suspended sentence for an unrelated assault.
Judge Tracey said the former boilermaker’s latest offending breached a good behaviour bond imposed for threatening to knock down a lawyer in a 2011 Workers Compensation Tribunal hearing, while in 2015 he abused then tripped over yet another lawyer, who tumbled to the floor.
Judge Tracey said his anxiety led to his bizarre outbursts and he displayed obsessive, paranoid and narcissistic traits.
“I cannot be satisfied there are good prospects for your rehabilitation in the longer term,” she said.
Moore-McQuillan was jailed for a nine months after the judge found his offending was too serious and lengthy for a home detention order.
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