Sal Vasta in fresh horror … More bullying, overbearing and threatening conduct from the judge … Vasta makes a pig’s ear out of application to amend a statement of claim … Transcript reveals Vasta’s alarming judicial style … Litigant in person removed from court … Janek Drevikovsky reports 

A decision was delivered last month by Federal Court judge Darryl Rangiah, granting leave to appeal from Sal’s decision in Gambaro v Mobycom Mobile Pty Ltd. 

Rangiah takes pains to avoid identifying the first instance judge, but a dash to the registry confirms that it is Sal by name, Sal by nature. The hectoring, interrupting judicial performance is unmistakable. 

Sal Vasta is the gift to law reporters, who keeps on giving. Only this week, the Fin Review dug up a full Federal Court decision that hauled Vasta over the coals for his “egregious departure from the role of judge”. 

He “significantly interrupted and disrupted” a litigant in person and was “sarcastic, disparaging and dismissive” of his evidence. The Full Feds overturned Vasta’s conviction of tour operator Leigh Alan Jorgensen who had been slotted to 12 months porridge and fined $85,000 in a fair work case. 

More than 70 of Sal’s judgements, we’re told, have been overturned on appeal and more are in the pipeline. 

The latest outrage concerns the judge’s threatment of litigant in person Michael Gambaro, who used to be a business developer in the telecom sector. In early 2017, he was fired from mobile service retailer Mobycom Pty Ltd. 

Gambaro sued, alleging unfair dismissal.  Mobycom said the dismissal was justified, because Gambaro had engaged in serious misconduct. 

Gambaro applied to the FCCA for leave to file an amended statement of claim and for further discovery, an application that was dismissed in an interlocutory decision by Vasta on October 22 last. 

Gambaro filed his leave to appeal to the FCA two days after the deadline. Rangiah granted leave and the extension and in the process unfolded Sal’s skin-crawling antics. 

The transcript does the talking … 

With Gambaro gone, Sal delivered an ex temp judgment refusing his application for an amended claim. 

The grounds of Gambaro’s appeal to the FCA were apprehended bias, judicial unfairness, and denial of the opportunity to be heard.

His Honour held that Concrete Pty Ltd v Parramatta Design and Developers meant he had to consider allegations of bias before anything else. The reasoning in that case was that bias, whether real or apprehended, strikes at the validity of the trial and can generate real injustice. 

He granted leave on that basis without considering the merits of the other grounds. He also thought there were good chances Gambaro would be successful in his appeal: 

“Although the orders were interlocutory, the prospects of success of the proposed appeal and the risk of injustice that would result from a refusal of leave to appeal warrant a grant of leave to appeal.”

The parties urged Rangiah to decide the appeal then and there, but that pleasure should be decided by a full bench: 

“While sympathetic to that submission, I have concluded that the appeal is of a nature that requires the attention of a full court. I propose to canvass with the parties measures that might minimise delay and expense.” 

Perhaps the idea is that a panel of judges will say it louder than one judge on his own – and for Sal, things need to be said very loudly indeed. 

Curiously, Vasta’s ineptitude and misconduct do not seem to have fazed Willy Alstergren, chief of both the Family Court and the Circus Court. 

Alstergren hand-picked Vasta to assist in “reforming” the court’s “efficient” administration of justice, also to act as chief judge of the FCC in Willy’s absence – as recently as last month. He also appointed him the “national case management judge”. 

Even more extraordinary, is that Vasta was on the cusp of landing a berth on the Family Court, which was only derailed when stories started to break about the way he conducts hearings and treats parties and witnesses. 

Criminal lawyers in Brisbane suffered from Vasta’s excesses when he was a crown prosecutor, yet attorney general Brandis preferred party politics over competence, giving Sal a leg-up onto the Federal Circuit Court. 

Gambaro v Mobycom Mobile Pty Ltd 

For more about Sal see: