Action against ICAC … Misfeasance in public office no stranger to Eddie Obeid … Elaborate claims that ICAC fitted-up the Obeid boys … Geoffrey Watson SC waved his finger and interrupted 

WHAT can we make of the 61-page statement of claim filed by the Obeids in the NSW Supreme Court yesterday? 

The defendants are former ICAC commissioner David Ipp, counsel assisting Geoffrey Watson SC, and seven ICAC staff, including its chief lawyer Roy Waldon. 

The state of NSW is also a defendant. 

The Obeids want orders that the ICAC people have engaged in misfeasance in public office, and that ICAC reports that besmirch the good names of the plaintiffs should be torn-up and burned.

The Obeid sons all give their occupations as real estate developers, while patriarch Eddie snr says he’s “retired”. 

Essentially they are pleading their their good names have been trashed because ICAC and its officers planted evidence, manipulated evidence, acted outside the scope of search warrants, and did secret deals with witnesses. 

There is an immunity in the legislation for anything done by ICAC in good faith. The Obeids have pleaded that the defendants acted in bad faith and with malice, not much of which is particularised – so those claims may stand a good chance of being struck-out.  

There is a pleading that “Geoffrey Watson was aware that he was neither a fit and proper person, nor suitable to act as counsel assisting in operations Credo and Spicer”. 

It seems to be saying that ‘Watson is not as good as he thinks he is’. It will be instructive to see how the barrister grapples with that assertion. 

The pleadings say counsel assisting behaved in a most un-barristerial manner by yelling at Eddie snr, angrily pointing and waving his finger at him, making sarcastic comments and interrupting and bullying him. 

Watson has already responded to the action saying, “These allegations are the greatest bunch of rubbish that I have ever read”. 

This sally by the Obeids smacks of a public relations campaign ahead of Eddie Obeid snr’s criminal trial on charges relating to giving inducements in 2007 to a senior public servant in return for favourable leases for family businesses operating at Circular Quay.

The civil action brought yesterday is in court on October 14. 

It seems to be part of the Sydney ethos that if you’re in a corner then mount a counter-offensive by finding someone to sue. 

Misfeasance in public office is an interesting claim coming from Eddie snr. It’s an activity with which it could be claimed that this plaintiff has had years of expertise. 

Here’s the statement of claim