{"id":3799,"date":"2014-10-21T13:43:39","date_gmt":"2014-10-21T03:43:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.wiseworkplacetraining.com.au\/2021\/09\/11\/shades-of-grey-raunchy-material-and-the-lessons-from-shea\/"},"modified":"2014-10-21T13:43:39","modified_gmt":"2014-10-21T03:43:39","slug":"shades-of-grey-raunchy-material-and-the-lessons-from-shea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wiseworkplace.com.au\/2014\/10\/shades-of-grey-raunchy-material-and-the-lessons-from-shea\/","title":{"rendered":"Shades of Grey: Raunchy Material and the Lessons from Shea"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Shades of Grey: Raunchy Material and the Lessons From Shea<\/h5>\n

In the recent costs hearing for Shea v EnergyAustralia Services Pty Ltd, Federal Court Justice Jessup helpfully took the opportunity to summarise the findings of Justice Dodds-Streeton regarding the original unfair dismissal proceedings. There, Ms Shea had unsuccessfully sought relief against alleged adverse action on the part of her employer.<\/p>\n

In a bad light<\/h5>\n

Ms Shea\u2019s accusations were substantial and relied upon various sources of information for purported corroboration. In his findings against the applicant, Justice Jessup spoke with evident disapproval regarding both the quality and the means of acquisition of Ms Shea\u2019s evidence. Of particular note, sexually explicit text messages between two staff members had been retrieved forensically by Ms Shea as purported proof of sexual harassment in the workplace. His Honour stated that Ms Shea\u2019s methods of obtaining both the phone and text messages \u2018did not show her in a good light\u2019, aligning with the substantive trial judgement as to the \u2018irregular\u2019 nature of the acquisition [57-58].\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Unseemly acts<\/h5>\n

But the inadmissibility of the texts \u2013 and the resultant forensic report \u2013 was not the only issue in question. Justice Jessup quoted with approval the original finding of Justice Dodds-Streeton \u2013 the text messages represented nothing more than \u2018a private exchange between consenting adult sexual partners\u2019 [quoted at 56]. Further, this private nature actually placed a duty of confidentiality upon any readers of the texts.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Thus, not only was the material found to have been obtained abnormally, usage of the forensic report was both irrelevant to the workplace issue at hand, and malicious in nature. His Honour went even further in his disapproval, noting the \u2018unseemly manner\u2019 in which the phone was obtained, with a very obvious agenda in play to cause \u2018embarrassment and humiliation\u2019 to the other party [59].\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Eyes on the court<\/h5>\n

In administrative proceedings, the rules of evidence don\u2019t formally apply. So there is a sense in mediations, conciliations and reviews that parties can place it all on the table in order to find resolution. The idea here is that people can often experience a greater sense of procedural fairness in a less formal environment. Yet Shea<\/em> reminds us of the considerable pitfalls that can occur in court proceedings when undetected irregularities have coloured earlier processes \u2013 inadvertently or otherwise. It is crucial that internal and external workplace investigators establish quality control mechanisms throughout all stages of information collection. Keeping any future court proceedings front of mind can assist investigators in overcoming the kinds of evidentiary taints that befell the applicant in Shea<\/em>. \u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Quality counts<\/h5>\n

And where certain key material can only be collected in an unusual manner, corroboration of the information obtained can assist in enhancing overall quality and future admissibility. Potential evidence should be free of irregularity, irrelevance, confidentiality breaches and\/or personal agendas. Certainly, administrative processes won\u2019t require the stringent attention to rules of evidence that apply in court. Yet the \u2018juiciest\u2019 piece of information brought out at in an administrative forum might well become the trial stage\u2019s most useless piece of scurrilous and ultimately inadmissible evidence. Worse \u2013 if found to be obtained for personal or \u2018unseemly\u2019 reasons, a hefty costs ruling is certainly a possibility for the parties involved.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Content retrieved from: http:\/\/www.wiseworkplace.com.au\/_blog\/WISE_Blog\/post\/shades-of-grey-raunchy-material-and-the-lessons-from-shea\/<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  Shades of Grey: Raunchy Material and the Lessons From Shea In the recent costs hearing for Shea v EnergyAustralia Services Pty Ltd, Federal Court Justice Jessup helpfully took the opportunity to summarise the findings of Justice Dodds-Streeton regarding the original unfair dismissal proceedings. There, Ms Shea had unsuccessfully sought relief against alleged adverse action […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[49,55,101,146,57,72],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wiseworkplace.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3799"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wiseworkplace.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wiseworkplace.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wiseworkplace.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wiseworkplace.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3799"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.wiseworkplace.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3799\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wiseworkplace.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3799"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wiseworkplace.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3799"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wiseworkplace.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3799"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}