A solicitor somewhere in Melbourne’s suburbs failed in his defence of sexual harrassment claims and was ordered by VCAT’s President, Justice Garde, to pay his victim compensation of $100,000: GLS v PLP [2013] VCAT 221. The solicitor described the complainant as a fantasist when she said that he asked her for sex in a most unwelcome manner, except to the extent that her allegations were corroborated by a video he himself had surreptitiously made during which he asked her most vulgarly for sex 78 times in about an hour and which he tendered to prove that she was coming onto him. Weird. But that was all just to grab your attention.
Now for the saucy bit: the President rehearsed the authorities on the Briginshaw application of the civil standard of proof, reproduced in this post. But it is also interesting in that the President expressly invoked the VCAT Act power to apply rules of evidence, and did so because serious allegations were being made. In a case about a solicitor, and for the protection of the solicitor. I don’t think I have seen that power expressly invoked in a VCAT decision before, except occasionally to reject the tender of particularly unreliable hearsay. Here’s hoping that it might be the start of the development of VCAT’s own de facto law of evidence, because a forum without any law of evidence is a strange beast, and a forum which has an unspoken de facto evidence regime undermines equality of access to it, creating an advantage in favour of those in the know, who will tend to be experienced users and lawyers. Continue reading “Suburban solicitor tenders video of himself asking employee for sex 78 times in his own sexual harrassment case”