Dugan considering suing NRL, Sharks for unfair dismissal after beating police charge
Josh Dugan is considering taking legal action against the Sharks and the NRL after beating one of the main police charges that led to his sacking.
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Josh Dugan is considering taking legal action against the Sharks and the NRL after beating one of the main police charges that led to his sacking and the end of his career.
The Sydney Morning Herald reported Dugan will consider legal action after beating one of the two police charges field against him in 2021.
The Sharks sacked Dugan in September 2021 with six weeks remaining on his contract after allegedly breaching the NRL’s COVID-19 protocols for a second time.
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The decision ultimately caused the end of the former Blues and Kangaroos centre’s professional rugby league career.
Police charged Dugan after he was pulled over near Lithgow, 150 kilometres from his home in Gymea, while Greater Sydney was in lockdown.
Forty minutes later, Dugan was charged a second time when police stopped him while he was travelling away from Sydney towards his property in Yetholme.
In Lithgow Local Court on Friday morning, Magistrate Kasey Pearce found Dugan not guilty of the first charge, but guilty of the second.
Dugan received a conviction for the second charge, but his lawyer, Paul McGirr, said he would appeal the decision.
“Basically, they couldn’t prove that he knew the laws, which I said nobody knew,” McGirr said of the first charge.
“The [COVID lockdown] laws were a joke, they were changing daily, sometimes twice daily.
“In sequence [charge] two, [the magistrate] said once he was given a direction he should have returned to Sydney.
“But I said that, on that basis, he was in the process of moving to another area and it’s maybe for another jurisdiction. She gave him a 10A, [which is] guilty of sequence two but no penalty.
“The laws were ridiculous; the police were [enforcing] laws they didn’t even know they were doing.
“It cost Josh his career on the basis he was terminated on that basis. We will be looking into those particular actions of the club, being the Cronulla Sharks.”
The NRL fined Dugan $50,000 for what was allegedly his second biosecurity breach, while the Sharks ripped up his contract.
McGirr said the actions of the Cronulla club and the NRL now face scrutiny after the court ruling.
“We will be looking into it because he was dismissed on this basis,” McGirr said.
“We will be looking to recoup some of those monies in relation to the fine that found he wasn’t actually guilty of the particular first offence. That is what started all of this.
“These corporations, including the NRL, appear to be taking a guilty-before-proven-innocent attitude. It should be the total opposite.
“I want to look into action against the NRL and whoever punished him for something that it turns out it he didn’t commit.”
Originally published as Dugan considering suing NRL, Sharks for unfair dismissal after beating police charge
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