The Sal Vasta file … A rummage through recent history … Bombast and bullying … Lashings of contempt … Errors of law … “Mentoring” underway … Ginger Snatch, an associate of judges, reports
In Judging Vasta UQ academic Rebecca Ananian-Welsh reminds us of three of his most egregious judicial performances. All of them involved Vasta flinging his trademark accusation that litigants are in contempt of court, orders for imprisonment, along with lashings of judicial interruptions, bullying and bellicosity.
It’s hard to keep track of Sal’s train crashes, so this exercise serves as a handy-take-home guide.
There was the Jorgensen case last month where an employer was fined $85,000 for underpaying his employees and found in contempt on nine counts. Vasta sentenced him to 12 months porridge.
The orders were overturned by the full Federal Court which found that Jorgensen had been denied procedural fairness due to the judge’s excessive and inappropriate interventions, along with other mistakes and misinterpretations of the law by the trial judge in relation to freezing orders on the appellant’s accounts.
After poring over the trial transcript the Federal Court (Greenwood, Reeves and Wigney JJ) said:
“A detailed review and analysis of the trial transcript in this matter clearly supports a finding that the trial judge’s interventions were such that both the disruption ground and the dust of conflict ground are made out. The primary judge’s interventions both undermined the proper presentation of Mr Jorgensen’s case and represented such an egregious departure from the role of judge presiding over an adversarial trial that it unduly compromised his Honour’s capacity to objectively evaluate the evidence.”
That was quite apart from findings that Vasta was “openly hostile … disparaging … sarcastic … aggressive … unfair … [and] frequently cut Mr Jorgensen off while he was endeavouring to explain critical aspects of his case”. The judge’s questions “would have been objectionable if asked by counsel”.
In February this year, an appeal bench of the Family Court, in the case of Stradford, overturned Vasta’s finding that a litigant husband was in contempt of court for failing to produce financial records. He was jailed for 12 months, where he spent six weeks in maximum security on suicide watch.
“Bring your toothbrush,” Sal said to the appellant after he failed to discover all the relevant financial records.
Strickland, Murphy and Kent JJ said:
“We are driven to conclude that the processes employed by the primary judge were so devoid of procedural fairness to the husband, and the reasons for the judgment so lacking in engagement with the issues of fact and law to be applied, that to permit the declaration and order for imprisonment to stand would be an affront to justice.”
In the same month, the full court of the Family Court (Ryan, Aldridge and Watts JJ) decided to overturn Vasta’s decision that the child of a same-sex couple should be baptised as a Catholic. No such order had been sought by the parties.
He threatened one of the litigants with five years jail if she broke his orders in relating to the child’s living arrangements. The appeal bench said that this suggests a “complete misunderstanding of the provisions of the Act that deal with contravention of parenting orders”.
Vasta also threatened to change the child’s residence from the appellant to the respondent if communication between them did not improve.
Again, the appeal bench said this threat caused it “considerable concern”, is “punitive and contrary to authority”, and “demonstrates impermissible pre-judgment”.
“Sadly, it is necessary to state that a judge in the position of a primary judge cannot simply oust well-settled principles of law … or preemptively decide they will not apply.”
There are other cases that it has been Justinian’s melancholy duty to report.
Last year, in Huda the full Family Court sent a husband and wife spat over loan money back to another judge to start again, after Vasta had stomped all over the proceedings in his hob-nail boots.
The appeal judges accepted that Vasta gave the appearance of being part of a “tag-team” for the wife’s counsel. There were pages and pages of transcript where the judge ran the questions.
This was accompanied by Sal’s characteristic sarcasm, procedural unfairness, grave factual findings, and multiple questions that would have been disallowed if counsel had asked them.
In July this year we reported that in a hearing ostensibly seeking to amend a statement of claim in an unfair dismissal case, Vasta threw a litigant out of his courtroom. See our report on Gambaro v Mobycom Mobile Pty Ltd.
Things went downhill from there until Gambaro, who was appearing for himself, was peremptorily thrown out of court for not getting to grips with Sal’s bizarre questions. The Federal Court granted Gambaro leave to appeal on the ground of the trial judge’s apprehended bias.
In all of these matters, where appeals have been determined, Vasta’s unfitness to conduct himself judicially and his propensity for errors of fact and law were referenced by the higher courts.
His unfitness for the job has meant that more than 70 of his judgments have been overturned on appeal with more to come, putting the justice system and litigants to additional time and money.
Vasta has been relieved of some administrative duties and is undergoing mentoring “in appropriate areas to fully assist and support the judge to fulfil his duties”.