Man successfully sues Federal Court judge for wrongful imprisonment

ABC NEWS (Australia)

A father of two has been awarded $300,000 after the Family Court identified a “gross miscarriage of justice” in the way he was jailed for failing to provide financial documents in a case relating to a routine property dispute.

Transcript

00:00 Mr and Mrs Stradford were appearing before Justice Vasta in a family law matter. They

00:07 were trying to divide up their assets. Justice Vasta told Mr Stradford to come to court with

00:14 certain specific financial documents. So he came back on the date and he didn't have them

00:21 with him. At that point, Justice Vasta got very angry, he flew off the handle and said,

00:26 "You are in contempt of court." And at that point, he immediately convicted him of contempt

00:33 and sentenced him to 12 months prison. So he was whisked off to jail. He stayed in jail

00:39 for seven days until lawyers got him out on bail. And shortly after that, the full court

00:44 of the family court, I think it was, overturned the conviction of contempt and were very critical

00:50 of Justice Vasta for having done it in the first place. This wasn't a criminal case.

00:55 This was a civil case. And what happened was that Justice Vasta really became very angry

01:01 immediately when Mr Stradford failed to produce these documents and said, "I don't have them."

01:06 But at that point, Justice Vasta didn't interrogate him properly and find out, "Well, why don't

01:10 you have these documents? Where are they? What's going on here?" He just immediately

01:15 got angry and metaphorically banged his gavel and convicted him of contempt. So the man

01:21 was denied, Mr Stradford was denied any kind of fair hearing or procedural fairness. It

01:26 was really just an immediate kind of impulsive reaction by Justice Vasta, which doesn't really

01:35 equate to a hearing and a finding of guilt.

01:39 [BLANK_AUDIO]

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