Speaking at a Business News event, prominent Perth lawyer Martin Bennett has revealed some of the dangers he encountered in his career.
Prominent Perth lawyer Martin Bennett has revealed some of the dangers he encountered in his career, including being followed while representing Lloyd Rayney.
Speaking at a Business News' Success & Leadership breakfast at Crown this morning, Mr Bennett detailed the high-profile cases he had worked on during his more than 40-year career in the Western Australian legal profession.
The Bennett law firm founder has primarily been known in the state as a defamation lawyer, and has represented prominent clients including Mr Rayney who sued the State of Western Australia, alleging the WA Police defamed him, in 2007.
At the event, Mr Bennett revealed he had been tailed by the police during Mr Rayney’s trial.
“I'd been about six years and never had a breathalyser administered, and I had three in the first three weeks of that trial,” he said.
“One was perhaps lucky; three was not a coincidence.
“I later found out that I was being followed for about the first three or four weeks of the trial, but it was intensely boring.
“But it would have been very embarrassing to be breathalised and test positive while you're prosecuting the police, as it were.
“I didn't see it as intimidating, but I did see it as attempting to find some embarrassment for me at the time.”
Mr Bennett compared the incident to his time as legal counsel for BGC founder, the late Len Buckeridge.
“I was acting for the late Len Buckridge and a unionist pointed a shotgun at me and told me how he's going to shoot me and that was intimidating,” he said at the event.
“Breathlysers are a lot lower grade of intimidation, especially because I hadn't been drinking, I was pretty safe.”
Mr Bennett acted for Mr Rayney from 2007 until late 2017.
The action, which is one of the longest running defamation proceedings in the state, resulted in the Supreme Court awarding Mr Rayney record damages of $2.62 million.
“I think the state solicitor office had 30 solicitors working on it,” Mr Bennett said.
“I briefed Terry Tobin QC, the editor of Australian Defamation Law and Practice, and they called probably all of the police officers who formed Operation Dargan, the team.
“I had an instructing solicitor who flew back from Rome two weeks before the start of the case.
“My previous assistant solicitor had resigned because of a medical condition. I put a young law graduate on the case, and she was hospitalised.
“It was fairly thin on the ground on our side.”
Recently, Mr Bennett acted for former Senator Linda Reynolds in several defamation proceedings in the Supreme Court and the Federal Court of Australia.
Last month, Ms Reynolds sued the federal government and law firm HWL Ebsworth over the $2.4 million financial settlement Ms Higgins received.
Ms Higgins, a former Liberal party staffer, alleged she was sexually assaulted by fellow staffer Bruce Lehrmann, on a couch in Ms Reynolds’ Parliament House office in 2019.
The action comes as the parties await a judgment to be delivered by Supreme Court of Western Australia Justice Paul Tottle, over the defamation trial Ms Reynolds launched against her former staffer Brittany Higgins and her partner David Sharaz.
At the event, Mr Bennett said his client’s new action against the Commonwealth was necessary.
“It involves the Commonwealth who are funding Linda's defence using Clayton Utz as her lawyers of a potential claim that Brittany was to make a personal injuries claim against Linda and Michaelia Cash on the Commonwealth,” he said.
“The net effect of that was, from Linda's point of view, paying out so quickly such an enormous sum for an action that hadn't been commenced, confirmed in the Australian public's mind, the allegations made by Brittany against her were true, and that caused her to start prosecuting and defending the defamations.”
