Federal Court knocks out Super Retail’s bid to disqualify whistleblower lawyers
The Federal Court has knocked out Super Retail’s bid to disqualify the law firm representing two former executives turned whistleblowers.
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Super Retail Group has failed in its bid to have a law firm acting for two former senior executives turned whistleblowers disqualified from representing them in an upcoming trial.
Justice Michael Lee in the Federal Court on Wednesday dismissed an attempt by Super Retail – owner of Supercheap Auto, Rebel, BCF and Macpac – to prevent Harmers Workplace Lawyers from representing former Super Retail legal boss Rebecca Farrell and former co-company secretary Amelia Berczelly.
The ruling, which took two hours to present, means Harmers can continue to represent the two whistleblowers in their upcoming court action against Super Retail in regards to allegations of workplace bullying and other inappropriate behaviour.
Counsel for Super Retail, law firm Allens, had claimed that a media statement put out by Harmers earlier this year on behalf of their clients was defamatory and could lead to Super Retail launching defamation action against the law firm’s chairman Michael Harmer and his two clients, Ms Farrell and Ms Berczelly.
This would lead to a conflict of interest emerging between Mr Harmer and his clients, as they would be parties to a defamation trial, and therefore the courts should disqualify Harmers from representing Ms Farrell and Ms Berczelly any further, counsel for Super retail had argued.
But on Wednesday, after two days of hearings – which included Ms Farrell and Ms Berczelly appearing in the witness box – Justice Lee ruled against Super Retail and has allowed Harmers to represent the whistleblowers.
Justice Lee said Ms Farrell and Ms Berczelly were aware of the conflict of interest issue and the possibly defamatory media statement put out by Harmers but still wanted the law firm to represent them.
The court this week heard that both whistleblowers were unemployed, that Ms Berczelly has not been paid since February and that by May their legal costs had mounted to $800,000.
The case will now shift gears to the more substantive matters of the whistleblower case against Super Retail, which involves allegations of workplace bullying, harassment, the misuse of the company’s travel budget and an illicit affair between Super Retail chief executive Anthony Heraghty and the then head of human resources Jane Kelly.
Super Retail has denied these allegations.
Meanwhile, Mr Heraghty and outgoing Super Retail chairman Sally Pitkin and the board could face tough questioning about the scandal and court cases from shareholders at the company’s annual general meeting in Brisbane on October 24.
Mr Heraghty in August pointed to the company’s record sales result for 2024 and strong momentum in the new financial year as evidence that his management team had not been distracted by the bullying and harassment scandal.
Super Retail notched up record sales of $3.9bn, up 2 per cent for the 2024 financial year, while net profit was down 8.7 per cent to $240.1m.
“You can very reasonably conclude that the management team are on the tools, and optimising the business to best shareholder benefit, so coming out of the gates in the first seven weeks with underlying like-for-like growth across all brands is a very, very credible result,” he said at the time, but would not comment on the court case.
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Originally published as Federal Court knocks out Super Retail’s bid to disqualify whistleblower lawyers
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