Court orders UTAS to pay application costs after missing deadline in Rathjen misconduct case
UTAS has been ordered to pay some legal costs in a sexual misconduct case after missing a key deadline for supplying documents. What the court heard.
The University of Tasmania (UTAS) has been ordered to pay the costs of another party’s legal proceedings after it failed to meet its own deadline for providing evidence in the case of alleged sexual misconduct by former vice-chancellor Professor Peter Rathjen.
Professor Rathjen is facing civil action in Hobart’s Supreme Court of Tasmania, where an ex-colleague is seeking damages after allegedly being groped by the former leader at multiple UTAS functions in 2016 and 2017.
The former staff member also claims UTAS is vicariously liable for assaults allegedly perpetrated by the former vice-chancellor.
Lawyers for UTAS and the former employee met on Wednesday before Associate Justice Michael Daly to decide whether UTAS would be responsible for the costs of the former employee to issue an application for discovery.
Lawyer for the former employee Audrey Mills told Associate Justice Daly that a consent order for discovery was made on September 19 this year for UTAS to make all evidence made available by October.
“Discovery was not made in accordance with this order and a further three requests were made by the plaintiff for the discovery,” she said.
UTAS’ lawyer Bronwyn Byrnes argued that costs should be decided upon the final result of the case, with the delays providing “no prejudice or disruption to any potential listing” of the matter.
“The discovery has been a very large task for UTAS,” she said.
“From the orders in court, there are around 50,000 documents that needed to be collated and reviewed.
“UTAS kept in touch with the plaintiff in regards to their progress and updated them on what discovery had been sorted.”
Associate Justice Daly said it was “not unreasonable” for the plaintiff to seek costs, given they wanted some precision on when they could expect discovery.
“Clearly, they wanted UTAS to give some clarity on how this pursuit was going to resolve,” he said.
Associate Justice Daly found in favour of the former employee, with UTAS ordered to cover the costs of the application to the court.
