The High Court has handed down long awaited judgments in 3 separate key abuse law cases.
- Bird v DP (a pseudonym) [2024] HCA 41
- Willmot v Queensland [2024] HCA 42
- RC v The Salvation Army (Western Australia) Property Trust [2024] HCA 43
In the most impactful of the decisions Bird v DP (a pseudonym) [2024] HCA 41 the court allowed a diocese’s appeal to find vicarious liability requires an employment relationship rather than an employment like relationship.
DP was a victim of child sexual abuse in the 1970s perpetrated by parish priest Bryan Coffey. The primary 2021 decision (upheld on appeal) had found Coffey had been the ‘essence’ of the diocese with an agency type relationship existing between them. Direct liability wasn’t established. DP was awarded total damages of $230,000 at the time.
Prior to this decision there was no authority from a superior court allowing a diocese—priest relationship to be recognised as creating vicarious liability.
In the High Court judgment the question of non-delegable duty was also dismissed even though some commentators had argued if the Court of Appeal was wrong on the vicarious liability issue, liability might alternatively be attached to the diocese under the principle of non-delegable duty.
The High Court judgment is also notable for Justice Gleeson’s dissenting opinion arguing liability could extend to relationships between church bodies and the members representing them. However she still agreed the diocese's appeal must succeed as Coffey committed sexual assaults opportunistically by taking advantage of his role to be alone with a young child.
Grants of permanent stay of proceedings
Also hugely significant Willmot v Queensland [2024] HCA 42 and RC v The Salvation Army (Western Australia) Property Trust [2024] HCA 43 were handed down at the same time. In Willmot, the High Court in considering the Limitation of Actions Act 1974 (Qld), s 11A (no limitation period for child abuse actions) allowed an appeal in part from a decision by an appeal court permanently staying Willmot’s damages claim. Willmot was an Indigenous woman removed from her family as a child in the 1950s and placed in care where she alleged she suffered sexual and serious physical abuse.
The law on stays had been recently and powerfully addressed by the High Court in its 2023 judgment GLJ v The Trustees of the Roman Catholic Church for the Diocese of Lismore (2023) Aust Torts Reports ¶82-998; [2023] HCA 32. But in Willmot the High Court acknowledged different interpretations have since been taken of the intersection between the stay principles of the Limitation Act 1969 (NSW), s 6A (which was an issue in GLJ) and provisions in other jurisdictions which all differ slightly.
See also the related decision RC v The Salvation Army (Western Australia) Property Trust [2024] HCA 43 where the court held those proceedings shouldn’t be stayed.
Source:
Bird v DP (a pseudonym) [2024] HCA 41, 13 November 2024
Willmot v Queensland [2024] HCA 42, 13 November 2024
RC v The Salvation Army (Western Australia) Property Trust [2024] HCA 43, 13 November 2024
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