Christian Porter’s high-profile barrister has “confidential” information that would give her an insight into the “strengths, weaknesses, honesty, knowledge and beliefs” of one of the ABC’s witnesses in its defamation defence against the former attorney-general, documents submitted to the federal court claim.
Ahead of next week’s hearing into whether defamation specialist Sue Chrysanthou SC can be blocked from acting for Porter in his high-stakes case against the ABC, a swathe of documents published by the federal court on Friday laid out the case against the silk by a close friend of the woman who accused Porter of raping her three decades ago.
Jo Dyer, who was a debater with the woman in the late 1980s, claims Chrysanthou has a conflict of interest because of a meeting the two women had late last year in relation to coverage by the Australian newspaper of an ABC Four Corners episode Dyer appeared in.
Also at the meeting was Macquarie Bank’s managing director, James Hooke, a friend of both Porter and his accuser for 30 years, who in March released a statement revealing he had “relevant discussions” with Porter’s accuser from “mid-1988 until her death” in June 2020 and with Porter from 1992 onwards.
In her own statement, also published on Friday, Chrysanthou said she attended the meeting as a “favour” to another barrister, Matthew Richardson, the son of former Labor powerbroker Graham Richardson, and a friend of hers.
Chrysanthou has denied breaching her duty as a barrister by acting for Porter after giving advice to Dyer, saying that while she did not seek her consent to act for the former attorney general, she did not need to.
According to her court documents, Chrysanthou did not bill Dyer for her time, and, she says, never agreed to act in any proceedings. However she admits that she did give further advice to Dyer on 27 and 28 January.
At issue in the case will be the nature of the information disclosed in the meeting, whether Chrysanthou had a lawyer-client relationship with Dyer, and whether her acting for Porter would amount to acting against Dyer’s interests.
Chrysanthou’s lawyers have said the barrister does not remember what was disclosed to her during the meeting. In her statement she says she does not recall any information of any relevance to the Porter case.
She says that in the “little time” she spent with Dyer she had “no view or opinion” on her “strength, weaknesses, honesty, knowledge [or] beliefs”. Chrysanthou’s lawyers also state Dyer “is not her client” and “is not a party to the Porter proceedings”.
But in a heavily redacted statement published by the federal court on Friday, lawyers for Dyer claim that during the meeting Chrysanthou was told about “facts, matters and circumstances” that were subject to lawyer-client confidentiality.
While that information is redacted in the documents, Dyer’s lawyers claim there is a “real prospect” that information “will be relevant to facts in issue or, alternatively, the credibility of witnesses called to give evidence in Mr Porter’s defamation proceeding”.
“The disclosure of these matters to Ms Chrysanthou, along with those identified in the preceding section, have put her in a position to form an overall opinion as to Ms Dyer’s strengths, weaknesses, honesty, knowledge and beliefs,” they claim.
“That opinion amounts to confidential information that should not be disclosed or used against Ms Dyer.”
While Chrysanthou’s lawyers say Dyer has no standing in the Porter case, Dyer’s lawyers say she “will be called” by the ABC as a witness in its defamation defence against Porter and is “therefore likely to be subject to cross-examination by counsel for Mr Porter”.
But Chrysanthou says that when she informed Dyer’s lawyer’s that she planned to act for Porter in March of this year, she gave an undertaking that “should any confidential information come to her mind, she would never disclose it to any person”.
After lawyers for Dyer raised concerns about her involvement in the case, she also gave an undertaking to “not cross-examine Dyer or Hooke should they become witnesses in the Porter proceedings”.
The three-day trial starting on Monday could have far-reaching consequences for Porter’s defamation case against the ABC.
During a hearing on Wednesday, Christopher Withers SC, acting on behalf of Porter, said it would be a “very, very big deal” if Chrysanthou was blocked from acting in the case because of the time already invested in the trial and her “specialist skills” as a defamation expert.
“That might be jeopardised if she can’t act ... it is why we are vigorously defending to keep her in the counsel in a case that has the most serious implications for (Porter),” he said.
