After Dr Michael Bar-Mordecai’s 83-year-old patient Eveline Hillston died in 1994, six minutes after he’d given her a shot of morphine, the medic, 36 years her junior, claimed the pair had been having sex four times a week and, as her de facto partner, he was entitled to her estate.
In September 2000, Bar-Mordecai, a then-Clovelly GP, was struck off the medical register after a tribunal found he had treated Hillston for more than a decade while they were in a personal relationship and had obtained more than a million dollars in cash and property from her.
Michael Bar-Mordecai leaving the Supreme Court in 2004.Credit: Peter Rae
Last week, after almost a quarter of a century trying to overturn his deregistration, Bar-Mordecai’s 42nd attempt failed.
In 1998, Bar-Mordecai lost his claim to Hillston’s estate, with the judge making note of his “highly unusual” medical records in which he’d listed Hillston’s wealth at $2 million, stated he was her de facto and that she was a virgin until the age of 72 as she had never had sex with her late husband. According to Bar-Mordecai’s records, she was now having “Coitus 4 x week”, with “100% Orgasm Frequency”.
Finding him an unreliable and untruthful witness, Justice Cliff Einstein rejected his claim that in 1989 Hillston tore up her will, saying, “I want to leave you my whole estate because you are the only one who ever cared for me and I love you, darling.”
Apart from his breach of doctor/patient ethics, the Medical Tribunal also found he was guilty of professional misconduct in that he administered 30 milligrams of morphine to Hillston and inappropriately signed the medical certificate stating the cause of death while he was in a personal relationship and considered himself to be a potential beneficiary of Hillston’s estate.
Since being struck off, Bar-Mordecai has made a multitude of allegations against judges, including incompetence, bias and fraud. He claimed one judge was “frothing at the mouth” while dealing with him.
As well as his futile attempts to get his practising certificate back, Bar-Mordecai’s “avalanche of litigation” also involved 40 attempts to relitigate his claim on Hillston’s estate, with only one minor success.
In March 2003, the president of the NSW Court of Appeal was scathing in his assessment of Bar-Mordecai, finding “his oral submissions amount to no more than a vexatious and at times scandalous re-agitation of issues disposed of earlier”.
Two years later Bar-Mordecai was declared a vexatious litigant, with acting Justice David Patten noting, “I do not believe that Mr Bar-Mordecai is in truth a person whom fate and malignity have exposed to an astonishing number of improbable circumstances, lies and hostilities” and that some of his assertions “seem like fantasies from the travels of Baron Munchausen”.
With more than 70 adverse judgments against him, on October 1, Bar-Mordecai, 78, tried once again to commence proceedings against medical regulators for failing to investigate “a conspiracy and fraud” allegedly perpetrated against him.
Last week, Justice Ian Harrison dismissed Bar-Mordecai’s application, saying his claims “are clearly vexatious”.
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