Rare earth miner and processor Tronox has won a permanent Supreme Court injunction against self-styled whistleblower Alexander Cokic.
Rare earth miner and processor Tronox has won a permanent Supreme Court injunction against self-styled whistleblower Alexander Cokic.
Justice Michael Lundberg has ruled the former Tronox contracts manager should take down a variety of LinkedIn posts containing sensitive documents.
Justice Lundberg rejected claims by Mr Cokic that he was eligible for a whistleblower defence over his online campaign against his former employer, which included various political and legal figures.
And he rejected evidence filed by Mr Cokic when fighting Tronox's application for a permanent injunction requiring him to deliver up his computer and other electronic storage devices.
The decision comes less than four months after Tronox applied for the permanent injunction and damages for Mr Cokic's campaign against his former employer.
Mr Cokic made a series of claims about environmental harm being caused by Tronox's Bunbury and Kwinana operations and alleged State Government inaction.
He tried to connect this back to the late 1980s and the WA Inc era.
Tronox applied on March 30 for summary judgment on its claims it was a victim of injurious falsehood by Mr Cokic, as well as claims that he had breached confidentiality by using information gained in the course of his employment at the company.
Tronox claimed Mr Cokic published documents and information in 2024 and 2025 that was the company's property.
Explaining his decision to give summary judgment in favour of Tronox, Justice Lundberg said affidavits and submissions by Mr Cokic contained "unsubstantiated allegations which do not focus on the issues of relevance".
While he had given some leeway to Mr Cokic as an unrepresented litigant, the court could not bolster the material presented by him.
"Similarly, the court cannot simply 'cherry pick' certain aspects of the affidavit material without assessing those aspects in light of the material as a whole," he said.
Mr Cokic was sacked by Tronox in August 2024 and then made several work-related claims against Tronox, including a WorkCover WA claim and an unfair dismissal action in the Fair Work Commission.
Mr Cokic had claimed the material on his LinkedIn account was already in the public domain because it had been filed in his unfair dismissal proceedings.
Justice Lundberg rejected this claim and said there was not any publicly available source of the information prior to its publication by Mr Cokic.
He said Mr Cokic had demonstrated a propensity to publish information about Tronox, even after being admonished about publishing confidential information.
