Dr John Myers fronts Supreme Court to appeal VCAT ruling

A disgraced Melbourne doctor who allegedly groped a woman and was disqualified from practising in two states has launched another legal bid to get his job back.

Disgraced Melbourne doctor John Barry Myers has launched another legal bid to get his job back.

A disgraced Melbourne doctor who once allegedly assaulted a “deeply vulnerable” psychiatric patient and asked her to “suck his c--k” has gone to Victoria’s highest court in a bid to get his job back.

It comes as John Barry Myers — who has been barred from practising in both Western Australia and Victoria — had his bid to re-register as a medical practicioner quashed by the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (VCAT) in July 2024.

VCAT ruled the former doctor — who previously ran for a seat on Glen Eira Council and for federal office as an independent candidate — was not a “fit and proper person” and cancelled his licence to “protect the public”.

Dr Myers has now appealed VCAT’s decision in the Supreme Court which reserved its ruling after a hearing on Wednesday.

Representing himself, he described the legal proceeding as “unjust” and claimed it was in the interest of all medical doctors that his case be heard.

Dr John Myers is challenging a VCAT decision to refuse his registration bid.

Marion Isobel, lawyer for the Medical Board of Australia, referred to the difficulty in following an “avalanche” of material Dr Myers filed as part of his appeal which included more than 11,500 pages.

She said the purported questions of law that he wanted the court to address were incoherent and that the board had already spent more than $19,000 responding to his appeal.

Ms Isobel said VCAT had “meticulously and painstakingly” looked at Dr Myers lengthy submissions and made a just ruling.

Associate Justice Ian Irving repeatedly requested Dr Myers to focus on his appeal, particularly on the questions of law he wanted answered and to explain how his appeal was in the public interest.

In its ruling last year, VCAT also described Dr Myers’ submissions as being “difficult to understand and frequently not relevant, and chaotic in format”.

The former doctor has faced a litany of complaints and allegations over the course of his career.

In 2000, Dr Myers pleaded guilty to indecent assault after he repeatedly squeezed the breasts of a woman working at a car dealership where he was purchasing a car.

Dr John Barry Myers at an earlier appearance before VCAT.

In court at the time, he attempted to explain his actions by saying he was just “trying to express empathy” and was looking “to comfort her as one might play with the puppy”.

He was fined $1500 for the offence and escaped without a conviction.

In 2013, VCAT deregistered Dr Myers after he engaged in a series of “entirely inappropriate” boundary transgressions with a patient who had a complex psychiatric history.

In 2015, Dr Myers was fined $10,000 and disqualified from practising in Western Australia for five years after he was accused of indecently assaulting and making sexually inappropriate statements to a psychiatric patient.

On one occasion, Dr Myers was alleged to have entered her room, shut the door behind him and groped her breasts.

He was also accused of saying words to the effect of “he wanted her to suck his c**k” and “he wanted to put his c**k between her breasts”.

Dr Myers has denied these allegations.