Mental ailments strike prominent crime solicitor … Teeth and leg problems … Unconvincing submissions from colourful medicos … Staff claiming unpaid money … Law shop disarray … Public protection out the window … Ostrich-like behaviour … Inability to open emails
Last weekend Kate McClymont went hammer and tongs in an excellent piece in The Sydney Morning Herald. However, there are few more wrinkles associated with the Fair Work case, brought by Galloway’s exiled staff, that need to be ironed out.
Most recently Judge Sophie Given in the FCFC refused Galloway’s application to reinstate the case following a default judgment on November 1, 2022 in favour of former office manager, Milena Molina, and solicitor, Raymond Zhai.
Both have been part paid following their termination, allegedly for “insubordination, intimidation and sabotage”, but money is still owing.
Galloway’s solicitor Jonathan Bolton gave undertakings in July 2022 that his client would pay the money ordered on April 6 by the Fair Work Commission – for Molina $41,305 and for Zhai $23,586.
Since then there has been a failure to cough-up the full amount.
Galloway didn’t appear at the November 1 proceedings and applied to Judge Given to set aside, vary and stay the default judgment by way of a reinstatement application.
Judge Given was not impressed with the submissions from doctors Joseph Grech and Tim Watson-Munro in aid of Gallaway’s application.
Their reports were based on what Galloway had told them.
Grech had not treated the solicitor for mental health issues, while Watson-Munro was a friend and had work referred to him by Galloway’s law shop and, in this instance, had been consulted over the phone.
The strange letter from Watson-Munro sought to address Galloway’s depression, without an evidentiary basis:
“… because of his mental illness, and were the court to affirm that deprivation of his basic right, that procedural fairness, then it would be doing so on the basis of someone who was mentally ill, and I believe that society’s expectation is that we take as great a care as we can of those who are unable to care for themselves.”
Judge Given observed:
“Society might be equally concerned by the proposition that someone who is said, by his own lawyer, to be so mentally ill that he is unable to care for himself, has been continuing to practice as a solicitor in courts of law.”
The judge did not accept that Galloway’s self-reported ailments established the truth of his medical complaints. She gave the doctors’ letters “little weight”.
The smorgasbord of excuses for not turning up to court and being landed with a default judgment included:
HH did not find Galloway “to be a fortnight, persuasive or credible witness”.
Despite claims that he couldn’t properly run his law shop, he still managed to represent clients “in a variety of jurisdictions and types of hearings”.
He told Judge Given that it is “well known that sometimes people have this problem” – i.e the problem of being able to manage other people’s affairs but not their own.
The judge was not persuaded that his mental condition prevented him from focusing on the Fair Work claims and incapable of managing his affairs because he was unable to open emails.
“I am of the view that Mr Galloway took an ostrich-like attitude in this matter, burying his head in the proverbial sand, and assuming that if he paid the applicants (most of) their entitlements, and otherwise declined to engage, the proceedings might dwindle and discontinue.”
If the default judgment was set aside and the proceedings reinstated, HH found there would be more prejudice to the applicants than to Galloway.
Galloway’s solicitor suggested there could be a cross-claim against Molina “dealing with potential irregularities”.
However, it was never denied that Galloway owed money to his former office manager, nor was any financial irregularity identified.
The Fair Work Commission found that Molina made commission payments to Zhai, and they had been recorded in the firm’s “unsophisticated” accounting system which was open and available to Galloway.
In cross-examination before the FWC he did not mention any anomalies about commission payments made to Zhai and there was no investigation made prior to dismissing Molina.
Deputy FWC president Michael Easton said that he was not satisfied that Galloway had reasonable ground to believe that the office manager had engaged in misconduct to justify dismissal.
In a final wrap of the reinstatement case, HH Judge Given dismissed Galloway’s application.
Doctors Joseph Grech and Tim Watson-Munro also have colourful histories. In 2019 Grech was suspended from practice for six months after being found to have lied to the Medical Council and been in possession of ice, among other unusual things.
Watson-Munro admitted to once having a $2,000 a week cocaine habit. The Psychologists Registration Board of Victoria in 2002 found that it had been deceived by the doctor and that he lived a “duel life” that involved “sustained and serious ethical impropriety”.
Galloway also had narrow escapes from the clutches of plod and the stipes. In 2019 he had a drug driving charge dismissed because his saliva test may have been contaminated at the police station.
In 2012 the then Administrative Decisions Tribunal in NSW found him guilty of professional misconduct over a raft of trust account irregularities.
In 2018 police surveillance captured conversations of Ahmed Jaghbir who alleged that Galloway had told him to organise a car crash so that his client Salim Mehajer would not have to be at court to face charges of assaulting a taxi driver.
Maybe, as we speak, the Law Society might not feel so conflicted that it cannot take steps to protect the public from members who can’t open their emails.