By Erin Pearson
The push by Nicola Gobbo, the barrister who turned police informer, for compensation has been delayed while lawyers await the fate of legislation designed to block all damages claims related to the Lawyer X scandal.
Gobbo is suing the state over her treatment at the hands of Victoria Police, and her case is due to go to trial in September.
Former barrister and police informant Nicola Gobbo.
A Supreme Court hearing on Friday, held for lawyers and the judge to discuss pre-trial matters, was told the parties needed a three-week adjournment to allow the airing of the bill and public discussions about its ramifications to take place. The respective legal teams would then analyse any wash-up.
Gobbo’s barrister, Tim Tobin, SC, had been fighting for a jury to hear the civil case, but said his team might instead push for a judge-alone trial because debate about the controversial legislation might have polluted a potential jury pool and unfairly prejudiced his client.
“At present, we are instructed and firmly instructed to maintain a jury, but we are concerned that this matter, the bill, is to go back to parliament as we understand it in the very near future,” Tobin said.
Bernard Quinn, KC, acting for the state, agreed the extent and nature of the publicity about the bill would be “highly relevant” to how any trial could be run.
Bernard Quinn, KC, outside court.Credit: Jason South
The court heard Gobbo’s defence team was also still waiting to receive final documentation needed before the trial, including details about her assets and financial affairs.
The Age revealed on Tuesday that the state government would introduce the State Civil Liability (Police Informants) Bill to protect Victoria Police, the government and individual officers from multimillion-dollar civil compensation claims connected to Gobbo and murdered lawyer Joe Acquaro. Acquaro, who provided information to police about former clients but was not a registered police informer. He was shot dead in 2016.
This includes those people found to have been wrongfully imprisoned and Gobbo, who received a $2.88 million settlement from Victoria Police in a 2010 lawsuit.
The proposed legislation was rushed through Victoria’s lower house on Wednesday, but is on hold until the end of August.
The bill will have to go to a vote because of a lengthy debate over the government’s 1000-page youth justice bill.
Without support from the Coalition and the Greens, the Labor Allan government has a difficult pathway to pass the legislation and will need votes from the Legalise Cannabis and Animal Justice parties alongside more conservative crossbenchers.
The Lawyer X saga is considered one of the darkest chapters in Victorian legal history and resulted in a royal commission after Gobbo appeared for some of the state’s most notorious gangsters while also acting as a double agent for police from 1995 to 2005.
The criminal convictions of two men, Faruk Orman and Zlate Cvetanovski, have already been overturned following Gobbo’s informing. The case of drug boss Tony Mokbel remains before the appeals court.
Gobbo’s civil trial is scheduled to start on September 30.
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