David v Goliath. Court gets real evidence from miner v BHP by accident

BHP kept evidence out of court for years while defending its case against an injured coal miner. But this way Michael West According to reports, the Court unintentionally proved its case.

BHP’s chickens are coming home to roost. The Great Australian and his various defendants managed to all but silence the case brought by injured coal miner Simon Turner and were subsequently expelled from the Court on procedural grounds.

But BHP’s high-octane provocations, hiring from Chandler MacLeod, legal eagles from Minter Ellison and a very quiet press might not be enough to make all this go away.

How ironic is this? After the case was suppressed, Turner granted permission to appeal to the Federal Court. But the Court told Turner he must pay $5,830 to appeal after imposing draconian gag orders on his case and trying to charge him $1,952.53 to gain access to transcripts in his own case.

He couldn’t afford this.

And so he filed a financial hardship application to have his appeal fees waived. The court requested pay stubs and three months’ worth of bank statements from Turner to prove the hardship claim.

He provided these accordingly. But here’s the thing. The pay slips prove what BHP and its co-defendants have been trying to keep out of court for 8 years: that his real employer was Chandler MacLeod (see main image above). Years of pay slips and years of evidence were suddenly presented to the court.

He winked. How BHP bulldozed a coal miner in court

Yes, two years’ worth of pay slips clearly show that his employer was Chandler MacLeod, BHP’s labor hire company. For years BHP and Chandler claimed Turner’s employer was a little-known mafia called Ready Workforce.

They later changed defense tactics in the recently suppressed case, claiming that Turner had agreed to sign a promissory note at his employer that said Ready (buried in the fine print). They argued that it does not matter whether the action is wrong or not, what matters is its approval.

The great paradox is that BHP and its partners have been trying for years to keep Turner’s pay slips out of court as evidence, but now the Court has inadvertently proven Turner’s allegations while demanding evidence for his hardship claim.

What will BHP, Minters and their partners be tackling next? That the evidence presented to the court cannot be used in court?

Parties that don’t party

Only two years of weekly pay slips are not issued from the day. Chandler – not Ready Workforce – took over his contract; but Turner’s PAYG records, pension records, Coal LSL (long service records) and the Leaving Certificate sent to Centrelink stating no workers’ compensation claims had been made… all show Chandler MacLeod was his employer.

Chandler is also a party to the transactions along with BHP Group Limited, Mt Arthur Coal Pty Ltd, Hunter Valley Energy Coal Pty Ltd and Coal Mining Industry (Long Service Leave Funding) Corporation. More ironically, one of the defendants, HVEC, mistakenly recorded the mysterious Ready Workforce’s ABN as ABN.

Things are definitely going to get a little tough for the defendants. They will have to argue that either the pay stubs Turner submitted to the Court were fraudulent or that Chandler was somehow not his employer, despite the weight of the evidence.

This is a dog’s breakfast.

Behind Turner’s claim is a group of miners employed as temporary workers, possibly illegally, at the massive Mt Arthur coal mine in the Hunter Valley. They may find themselves on the wrong side of an incident because they went so deceitful to defend Turner’s claim. $2.5 billion class action lawsuit for wage theft.

Case with Mouthpiece. Court dismisses injured coal miner, supports BHP