Gobbo appeals court loss in million-dollar compensation case

Nicola Gobbo’s million-dollar compensation fight with the Victorian government is not over, after the former barrister and police informer lodged an appeal late on Friday afternoon against her high-profile court loss.

Last month, a judge ruled for the first time that Gobbo broke the law during her time snitching on clients and threw out her four-year battle for compensation, ordering Gobbo to pay the state’s costs. From hiding, Gobbo issued a warning to anyone considering turning supergrass: “You will not be protected.”

Nicola Gobbo has been living in hiding since she was publicly revealed as an informer in 2018.Credit: ABC

The gangland barrister’s career came crashing down in late 2018 when it was publicly revealed she had been secretly spying on her clients for police as “Informer 3838” or “Lawyer X” at the height of Melbourne’s underworld war.

In her lawsuit, Gobbo claimed “negligence” and “malfeasance in public office” by a number of high-profile police officers had destroyed her life when they “groomed” her to snitch on gangland heavies, such as Tony Mokbel, and roll crooks against each other.

But Supreme Court judge Melinda Richards found “Ms Gobbo’s own illegal conduct put her at risk of harm”. While police officers, including former chief commissioner Simon Overland, were aware that using the lawyer as an informer put Gobbo “at serious risk, including risk of death”, Richards concluded the officers did not breach their duty of care owed because “the risk was obvious ... [it] was an inherent risk once she became an informer”.

Gobbo’s challenge in the Court of Appeal, filed on the last day to appeal the ruling, argues that the law of duty of care was misapplied. Her lawyers said the judgment punished Gobbo and her children, who had been abandoned by police, while others involved in the scandal were “able to get on with their lives without consequence”.

Gobbo with her then-client Tony Mokbel outside court in 2004. Credit: Nine

The Lawyer X scandal rocked Victoria Police and caused a string of gangland figures to appeal against their convictions, including Mokbel, who is now out on bail. But no police officers have ever been charged over their conduct.

Her lawyers said Gobbo “recognises the harm done to public confidence in the justice system, including because of her own actions”. But “she maintains that her motivation in assisting the police, however misguided, was to help protect Victorians from organised crime”.

The civil ruling against Gobbo last month was the first time a judge had upheld Victoria Police’s claim that it owed no duty of care to the lawyer – and therefore no compensation – because she allegedly committed crimes while acting as a police agent from 2005 to 2009.

Gobbo had not only “engaged in several specific instances of perverting the course of justice” by informing on her clients, Richards found, but she also obtained a financial advantage by deception when she went on accepting their money “pretending she was a barrister who would act in [their] best interests and keep their confidences, when she was not”.

Gobbo had argued that the failure of police to keep her role as an informer secret had caused serious and lasting damage to her health, mental state and career.

She originally sought damages in the range of $20 million to $30 million from the state, which is responsible for the actions of Victoria Police. But a recent law passed by the government capped her total potential compensation payout at $1 million.

“The state can’t be held liable,” Richards said in giving her decision on June 13, noting that Gobbo had already entered into an agreement with police in 2010 as part of an earlier deal that awarded her $2.88 million in compensation.

When she gave evidence from a secret location during last year’s trial, Gobbo described being “groomed” to become an informer while ill and then living on the run across multiple continents with young children after police bundled her out of the country and gave her a new identity.

Mokbel, pictured in May, is on bail.Credit: Joe Armao

Gobbo said she had been trapped by the logistical nightmare of being unable to touch her assets or leave the house without a police escort, and that police had threatened to remove her children if she did not comply.

The trial was closely watched online by gangland figures, though Gobbo’s face was shown only to the judge and legal teams.

Richards found that Gobbo’s time walking the tightrope as both lawyer and informer had caused a relapse of her mental health conditions, but did not accept it had exacerbated any of the physical conditions that had plagued Gobbo since she had a stroke in 2004, aged 33.

Claims for damages by Gobbo’s two children were also thrown out last month, given they relied on their mother’s case.

At the time, Victoria Police said it was satisfied with the court’s decision and that Taskforce Reset, set up after the Gobbo saga, would be wound up.

Last month, Mokbel was awarded an undisclosed compensation sum over his savage prison bashing in 2019.

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