A barrister has been ordered to fork out for court costs after attempting to start a doomed appeal bid for a client who claims he was unfairly dismissed by the ACT government.
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Barrister Judith Keys represents Clinton Dahler, who is suing the ACT and the Minister for Disability, Children and Young People for unfair dismissal.
Mr Dahler claims the termination constituted "adverse action" and contravened the Fair Work Act, and the case is continuing.
A number of interlocutory decisions have gone against Mr Dahler in the Federal Circuit Court, and his defence made an application for leave to appeal the rulings in the Federal Court.
But that appeal bid was refused in September, prompting the ACT government to seek money for court costs.
The ACT Government sought to force Mr Dahler to pay costs by arguing the application for leave to appeal had been made without reasonable cause, meaning it was bound to fail.
Mr Dahler fought against paying court costs, arguing the government had failed to establish that the appeal bid had been doomed to fail.
The Federal Court, in a judgment published last week, again found against Mr Dahler.
But, rather than make Mr Dahler accountable for costs, Justice Anna Katzmann found it was his barrister who should pay.
"I was ... troubled by the notion that Mr Dahler, who is unemployed, should have to pay the costs when the application could arguably be viewed as a misguided attempt to rehabilitate Ms Keys's reputation and when it was her poor judgment which caused those costs to be incurred," Justice Katzmann wrote.
Ms Keys had sought, in part, to appeal against the primary judge's decision not to recuse himself.
She argued the judge should not sit on the case because he had been critical of her conduct in a past case, raising concerns of bias.
It was also argued that, by refusing to remove himself, the judge had failed to acknowledge his past criticism of her was "unfair and unjustified".
That was described as "hopeless" by Justice Katzmann last week.
"The contentions made by, or more accurately on behalf of, Mr Dahler were, in truth, hopeless," she wrote.
"Even if the criticisms of her conduct in the earlier case were unfair, Ms Keys could point to no logical connection between them and the proposition that the judge had a closed mind which was not open to persuasion in the present one."
