Palmer's $10m law fight heats up

CLIVE Palmer has signed up a new legal team in a bid to extract $10 million in damages from an independent arbitrator.

Clive Palmer

CLIVE Palmer has signed up a new legal team in a bid to extract $10 million in damages from an independent arbitrator who handed down a written judgment that the tycoon's soccer club had flouted its obligations and treated a German player shabbily.

Documents lodged in the Queensland Supreme Court earlier this month also show the prime ministerial aspirant's failure to meet legal deadlines in relation to the case is blamed on a "break-in" at the Brisbane offices of his company, Mineralogy, in May and the alleged theft of computer files.

Mr Palmer, who is renowned for being highly litigious, has repeatedly boasted that he has been to court 68 times and won every case. But before his action for $10m against the Sydney-based independent arbitrator for the Football Federation of Australia, Shaun McCarthy, has been finalised, he has been ordered to pay legal costs. The action was launched after Mr McCarthy conducted hearings of the National Dispute Resolution Chamber and ruled in 2011 that the Gold Coast United club, which Mr Palmer controlled at the time, had "acted dishonourably" and its actions were "particularly egregious" in breaching the contract of a player, Peter Perchtold.

Perchtold had been lured from a German league with a two-year contract but this was rescinded after he received a Gold Coast United manager's email which said: "Clive has decided that he doesn't want to commit to more than one year and that includes everyone, includes me and you. No exceptions! I know you have a contract for two years and legally you are right, but however, I am trying to . . . prevent a situation that Clive will say: 'tell him to take me to court'."

In his written findings, Mr McCarthy, a barrister, said Clive was "presumably Clive Palmer, the owner of the club", and ruled: "The club, or specifically, the person responsible for this decision, clearly acted dishonourably, showing utter contempt for the principles underpinning the law of contract. Notions of fairness appear to have played no part in the decision-making process of the club.

"This appears to be a case of the club attempting to bully the player into compromising his clear legal rights and entitlements. It seems to me that the club sought to exploit the perceived vulnerability of the player by flexing its superior bargaining muscle in the hope that the player's inferior financial position would influence him to bow to the club's unconscionable pressure."

Mr McCarthy awarded Perchtold $340,000 in damages for breach of contract. It is understood he has still not been paid.

Mr Palmer, who has severed ties with the club after a controversial and damaging ownership punctuated by battles with fans and Football Federation Australia chairman Frank Lowy, sued Mr McCarthy, alleging defamation in an action seeking $10m.

He was concerned that he had not been consulted before the references to him in the findings.

Supreme Court judge Ros Atkinson has been told by Mr Palmer's new lawyer in the case, Liam Prescott, that "during May 2013 Mineralogy's offices were broken into, computer equipment was stolen and its computer systems were interfered with. The matter is the subject of investigation by the Queensland police. As a result, Mineralogy's computer servers experienced significant technical difficulty which disrupted its email and calendar functionality."

He said the break-in contributed to Mr Palmer not knowing he was required to attend a Supreme Court conference about the case.

Mr McCarthy's lawyer replied that Mr Palmer had a "vast array of other commercial and political interests" and added: "To think that . . . he was, thereafter, so disrupted as to mean he could not be made aware of the hearing of an application for proceedings commenced by him, and in which he claims almost $10m in damages, is untenable."

The FFA, which revoked Mr Palmer's Gold Coast United A-league licence last year, and Mr McCarthy would strenuously defend the defamation action, senior sources told The Australian.

Mr Palmer is also running a $10m action against the Gold Coast Bulletin for reporting Mr McCarthy's judgment. The Australian is being sued for almost $1m for an unrelated article last month about the leak of a document showing he wanted $200m from a Chinese company or he would have to axe more than 1000 staff. Mr Palmer, who is putting candidates in every seat in Australia for his Palmer United Party, said yesterday he was not given the right to put his case by Mr McCarthy before his findings. He has previously claimed The Australian received documents allegedly stolen in the break-in.