Judge brings up previous encounters in Sino Iron case

CLIVE Palmer admits that litigation is one of his hobbies.

CLIVE Palmer admits that litigation is one of his hobbies.

That much was clear in Queensland’s Supreme Court yesterday, during the latest instalment in the legal stoush between Mr Palmer and Chinese company Sino Iron.

Presiding judge David Jackson disclosed that, during his career as a barrister before being appointed to the bench by the Newman government in 2012, he had appeared for the other side in four of Mr Palmer’s highest profile court battles in the past two decades. The list reads like a greatest hits of the Palmer United Party leader’s litigation history.

The first, Justice Jackson said, occurred in the early 1990s when he was a junior counsel acting for a barrister being sued by Mr Palmer’s Australian Commercial Research and Development company.

Then he was senior counsel for former premier Anna Bligh in 2009, when Mr Palmer sued her and then-treasurer Andrew Fraser for defamation after the politicians suggested he’d tried to “buy” the Liberal National Party. That case was settled out of court after mediation.

In 2012, the former top silk represented the Football Federation of Australia when Mr Palmer’s Gold Coast United soccer team took Queensland Supreme Court action against the FFA. Also that year, he was one of a fleet of senior counsel representing Hyatt of Australia Ltd in its damages claim against Coolum Resort Pty Ltd and Mr Palmer personally, in relation to his takeover of the Sunshine Coast golf resort.

Justice Jackson said he did not feel his past-life legal encounters with Mr Palmer, the defendant in the current suit, should prevent him hearing the Sino Iron case fairly. He merely wanted to air the history.