From revisiting the political scandal that sparked a cultural reckoning in Canberra to a rich-lister’s unravelling, there were no shortage of court battles being waged — or defended — by the top end of town in 2024.
We revisit some of the cases that dominated headlines and left us shocked, perplexed, and — at times — even entertained.
Brittany Higgins defended a defamation action launched by Senator Linda Reynolds.Credit: Composite image/Holly Thompson
Villain or victim? Reynolds v Higgins
It was a story of an alleged rape in the halls of Parliament House and a covert political cover-up, and like all “fairytales”, it needed a villain.
That was how WA Senator Linda Reynolds’ lawyer Martin Bennett began the five-week-long trial in her defamation suit against former staffer Brittany Higgins and her husband David Sharaz, the most high-profile case to go before WA’s civil courts in 2024.
The former defence minister sued Higgins over social media posts accusing her of mishandling the former staffer’s alleged rape by Bruce Lehrmann in March 2019 — a claim that was later aired by the media and created a storm that led to Reynolds’ political demise.
Higgins fiercely defended the action on the basis her posts were true, but opted against taking the stand at the eleventh hour amid concerns for her health.
The trial, which the pair mortgaged and sold their homes to pursue, pored over the events of 2019 in excruciating detail, dragged in high-profile figures — from former prime minister Scott Morrison to broadcaster Peta Credlin — and threw private texts into the public arena we imagine the parties would have preferred to remain private.
It also spawned fresh evidence Reynolds now wants to use as a weapon in her bid to have Higgins’ $2.4 million compensation claim probed by the corruption watchdog.
Lehrmann has maintained his innocence since his 2022 criminal trial was aborted due to juror misconduct, but a Federal Court judgment found, on the balance of probabilities, that he did rape Higgins. Lehrmann is now appealing that ruling.
Justice Paul Tottle is expected to hand down a judgment in the court row in the New Year, but we suspect there won’t be any winners in this saga.
Western Australia’s mining dynasty, of which the nation’s richest person Gina Rinehart is the most famous member, was embroiled in a court fight over the rights to the Hope Downs projects in the state’s iron-rich Pilbara region.Credit: Marija Ercegovac
Gina Rinehart: 1, Bianca and John: 0
The high-stakes clash over the Hope Downs iron ore project, which pitted Australia’s richest person Gina Rinehart against two mining dynasties and her eldest children, occupied two floors of the Supreme Court for more than six months in 2023.
And yet still, there was unfinished business in the battle for the multibillion-dollar asset.
The case made headlines again in April, when Rinehart’s eldest children lost an eleventh-hour bid for 82 top secret documents their billionaire mother claimed were protected by legal privilege.
The pair, who have been locked in a bitter battle with their mother over mining assets left behind by their pioneer grandfather Lang Hancock, believed the files might aid their pursuit for ownership of Rinehart-led Hancock Prospecting’s sprawling mining tenements in the state’s north-west.
But Justice Natalie Whitby ruled the pair had insufficient evidence, lashing the handling of the case and its burden on the public justice system after revealing the court book spanned 6000 pages.
“To say that the resources dedicated to these privilege claims was grossly disproportionate to the issues in the dispute is an understatement,” she wrote.
Ouch...
We’re still awaiting a judgment from Justice Jennifer Smith on the broader row.
We hope Justice Smith is not spending the whole festive season “in the area of or contiguous to” her desk and what we imagine is a very lengthy draft judgment.
Beleaguered Mineral Resources boss takes on media to keep court row quiet
He gained a reputation as the uninhibited billionaire mining boss behind Mineral Resources’ meteoric rise, but it would be what Chris Ellison kept hidden that would be his downfall.
Depressed lithium prices, sweeping cost cuts and a debt-laden balance sheet saw Ellison declare it the “shittiest time” to be a managing director in one newspaper interview.
Just a few months later, he would announce plans to vacate the top job, undone by an exposé in the Australian Financial Review detailing his involvement in an alleged decade-long tax evasion scheme.
But as shareholders were demanding answers and the corporate regulator was beginning its own probe, Ellison’s lawyers were busy fighting to keep the media from undoing sweeping gag orders over documents filed in his now-settled row with a former contracts boss.
The documents were central to the two-year court row MinRes, Ellison and self-proclaimed whistleblower Steven Pigozzo had been fighting on several fronts until inking a peace deal in July — which featured explosive allegations of misconduct.
While a string of Pigozzo’s claims had been republished by the media, much of the case had been covered by suppression orders which were broadened when both parties asked that more than 16 legal documents be permanently removed from the case file.
“The non-publication orders are sought to fortify matters raised previously about allegations that were not just irrelevant but scandalous,” Ellison’s lawyer told the court.
WA Health, scientist ink top-secret stem cell patent peace deal
She was the face of Royal Perth Hospital’s state-of-the-art cellular therapy facility, the Perth scientist behind a medical invention that saw her wheeled out by the health department’s publicity team to showcase its life-changing research.
That was until the day of Dr Marian Sturm’s retirement in 2021, when the health service dragged her to court demanding compensation and that the licence agreement for the invention be torn up.
The three-year medicine ownership battle came to an abrupt end in March after the East Metropolitan Health Service and Sturm’s company Isopogen inked a top-secret peace deal.
The lawsuit centred around intellectual property rights to an improved method of manufacturing mesenchymal stromal cells used to treat inflammatory illnesses, which Sturm developed in 2007 and registered in her name and that of her capital-raising vehicle Isopogen.
Sturm’s relationship with the EMHS soured amid claims she had breached her contract by asserting ownership over the medicine, which saw Isopogen, two former employees, the state’s own patents attorneys and its insurer embroiled in a bitter legal pursuit with the health service.
The parties claimed they had reached a mutually acceptable, confidential settlement which provided a comprehensive framework for “an ongoing relationship”.
A spokesperson for the health service told this masthead that gag order extended to how much this three-year sparring match cost the taxpayer. How convenient.
Vegan activist Tash Peterson, partner cop $280k bill in defamation row
She’s not quite the “top end of town”, but we couldn’t take a look back at the biggest civil cases of 2024 without referencing the whopping damages bill handed to Perth’s most prominent animal rights activist.
In November, Tash Peterson and her partner were ordered to pay $280,000 in damages to the owners of a Perth veterinary clinic for defamation after a bizarre dispute in 2021.
The dispute, which was later circulated on social media, was sparked after Peterson and Jack Higgs spotted two cockatiels in a large cage at the front of Dr Kay McIntosh and Andrew McIntosh’s Bicton Veterinary Clinic.
What unfolded was a bizarre tirade in which Peterson accused the clinic of “advertising animal slavery” — despite neither of the birds being able to survive in the wild — and of eating their own patients.
Peterson and Higgs had claimed their tirade was justified as honest opinion, defending the content on the basis it was substantially true and a matter of public interest.
But the part of the trial that managed to capture the most attention were revelations about just how deep Peterson’s pockets were, with the V-Gan Booty Pty Ltd entity behind her burgeoning OnlyFans account generating more than $380,000 in earnings in 2022 alone.
We suspect this won’t be the last we see of Peterson.
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