When NSW Premier Gladys Berejikian moved to make COVID-19 vaccinations compulsory for tradies in early August, lawyer Nathan Buckley saw an opportunity.
The partner at law firm G&B Lawyers created a Facebook group on August 10 to crowdfund $1 million for a class action: “The challenge will be to overturn the NSW government public health order requiring construction workers to get jabbed in order to return to work.”
Buckley — no relation to the former Collingwood coach — posted his bank details and told the group he would accept a minimum of $500. Within two weeks, he had raised more than $100,000, bringing the total funds he’d personally fundraised for COVID legal challenges to more than half a million dollars.
Buckley is one of a handful of Australian lawyers and law firms raising hundreds of thousands of dollars for legal challenges against pandemic health orders.
Crikey has seen more than $1 million raised across several campaigns listed on crowdfunding platforms for Australians’ class actions or test cases against vaccine mandates or lockdown orders. These campaigns are frequently shared in online anti-vaccine and conspiracy communities, making it one of the common ways money moves out of these communities.
Additionally, Crikey has not seen a single challenge from these crowdfunded efforts that was ruled in favour of the plaintiff. Nor did any of the organisers of the campaigns provide any examples. Some cases are before the courts or yet to be filed.
It’s not illegal to repeatedly test whether public health restrictions and requirements go beyond their legal authority. Class actions are a legitimate form of business for law firms. The legality of vaccine mandates in various industries is unclear and will be tested in court. Crikey does not suggest any criminal activity or professional misconduct has been committed.
What this shows is how lawyers are able to raise large sums of money online to challenge COVID-19 health restrictions, with online fringe and conspiracy groups supporting these efforts.
Another attempt by Buckley to challenge mandatory vaccinations Australia-wide which raised more than $360,000 has been shared more than 42,000 times, according to crowdfunding platform GoFundMe’s public metrics. Sharers include the long-running Australian Vaccination-Risks Network Facebook page and in the Telegram channel for the Melbourne “freedom” anti-lockdown protests.
In Buckley’s case, his social media has been key to promoting it. The Facebook page for his law firm has more than 37,000 followers and Buckley runs a number of vaccine-related Facebook groups with nearly 100,000 combined members.
Buckley and other lawyers who have crowdfunded campaigns also embrace and share vaccine misinformation, like questioning whether COVID-19 tests can detect the virus or falsely saying that vaccines “don’t work“.
The specific legal action being crowdfunded is often vague. Former solicitor Serene Teffaha reportedly raised $654,000 for a national class action against premiers for implementing curfews, border closures, mask mandates, vaccine mandates at businesses, and forbidding disproven COVID treatments. Other times, lawyers like Buckley begin fundraising before they’ve found a plaintiff to run their claim with.
These crowdfunded legal claims have a track record of being dismissed or falling over before they make it to court. Of the six crowdfunding campaigns Buckley ran, at least three have been unsuccessful so far. In Bou-Jamie v Goodstart Early Learning, Fair Work Commission deputy president Nicholas Lake even criticised the conduct of the applicant who was represented by Buckley and barrister Jim Pearce: “The submissions are further hindered by a series of somewhat spurious claims levied by the applicant which obfuscate the key issues at hand and make a novel case even more unclear.”
Teffaha’s practising certificate was cancelled in April by Victoria’s Legal Services Board for reasons that are not published. This happened months after she raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for the class action to be carried out by her one-person firm, Advocate Me. This class action has failed to progress. Some people who contributed to the action have requested a refund, and a large amount remains in trust.
There is limited information about how the donated funds are being spent. Many campaigns specify funds will be used to pay “legal costs”, including lawyer and court fees. But there is little transparency. Platforms like GoFundMe, which classify contributions as “donations”, will verify the identity of a user withdrawing funds from a campaign but don’t require proof or review of expenditure. Other crowdfunding efforts direct people to send money directly to a bank account, which is completely opaque.
Using either online crowdfunding platforms and direct bank transfers means there’s no third party requiring the campaign’s organisers to disclose cost breakdowns: court fees, the cost of lawyers’ time or how much time is spent. Decisions about the amount of resources are made by the organiser.
Buckley, Teffaha and the Maatouks Law Group (which has raised nearly $100,000 for a class action against NSW lockdowns) did not respond by deadline to questions about how they would disclose funds were spent or how decisions about expenditure were made.
Teffaha’s disqualification provided rare insight into these challenges. In an email shared to her Telegram channel in April, the temporarily appointed manager of her firm questioned why she had spent more than $1000 on invoice software (“please provide an explanation for the apparent use of client trust money held in respect of the national class action to pay a general office expense”), facility hire and court filing fees for an action that was never filed. Teffaha said the expenditure was linked to another class action she was running.
It’s also up to the organiser to tell potential supporters the prospects of success of the case. Buckley claims that a vaccine requirement for construction workers in NSW is unconstitutional because only the Commonwealth has the power to enforce such a mandate. However, Australian Catholic University dean of law and constitutional law Professor Patrick Keyzer says such an argument doesn’t hold water.
“My guess is that a constitutional challenge to state legislation requiring construction workers would be likely to fail,” he told the AFR.
Despite organisers sometimes promising these challenges have a good chance of success, many of those who claim they’ve chipped in seem to be motivated by the principle of challenging these laws and are not worried about the chances of success. When challenges are unsuccessful or crowdfunding fails to reach a certain milestone, many involved say they don’t want their money back or they’re happy for it to be carried over to another challenge.
“Yo people don’t even think about pulling out we need this. Win or loose it’s worth the gamble. Think of the money you put in as telling the so called leaders to get fucked,” a contributor wrote in one of Buckley’s Facebook groups.
These crowdfunded challenges have angered other people in these fringe communities. There’s been increasing scrutiny on Buckley’s fundraising from at least one prominent member of the Australian anti-vaxxer community, who Crikey has chosen not to name to avoid spreading their misinformation further, and someone has created an anonymous Telegram channel scrutinising Buckley’s conduct.
Recent developments mean that the legality of broad vaccine requirements looks unlikely. The Fair Work Ombudsman released advice making it clear that industries could enforce it only if it was “lawful and reasonable”. Now the NSW government has caved to pressure from backbenchers, allowing tradespeople to either get vaccinated or undergo rapid antigen testing for the virus.
These developments had nothing to do with any of the myriad legal challenges. Teffaha remains disbarred but is trying to organise a new COVID class action. Buckley says he’s found a plaintiff for his NSW vaccine construction mandate challenge but is still looking for more. Other law firms have yet to take any concrete steps to legal action.
But that hasn’t stopped them promoting their causes online. And the donations keep on rolling in.
Correction: The article wrongly stated that some people who contributed to Ms Teffaha’s national COVID-19 class action have received funds. While corrections have been requested, they have not been processed.
Fascinating, particularly when read in conjunction with today’s piece from Malcolm Bradley.
Those who are gullible and credulous enough to fall for the anti-vax propaganda clearly have a more general gullibility problem which is being exploited by these appeals to fund non-viable legal challenges with no way to tell where the money goes. It’s tempting to use phrases like ‘a tax on stupidity’ but that does not fit when discussing entirely voluntary giving. It would be interesting to know what views those who are taking the money actually have towards the causes they exploit – are they in fact hostile to the anti-vax campaign, or merely indifferent so long as they make money?
This is small beer compared to the vast sums being systematically extracted from Trump’s supporters in the USA by Trump himself and by all sorts of crooks and chancers around him. But the principle is the same
“Fascinating, particularly when read in conjunction with today’s piece from Malcolm Bradley.”
Michael Bradley?
Err… yes. Michael. Apologies to all for the confusion.
Neither do I. But that won’t stop me believing they’re grifting parasites, and the evidence I have for my belief is much greater than that for the claims these parasites are making.
“ It’s tempting to use phrases like ‘a tax on stupidity’”. Very tempting indeed. It’s almost as bad as health insurance, which Ross Gittins describes as a tax on the innumerate.
I know that there are some decent lawyers but in general, this article only increases my disdain and contempt for this (so-called) “profession”.
Some years ago I was listening to the ABC’s “Law Report”. They had a guest on the program who mentioned that it was becoming increasingly popular in biological research laboratories to use lawyers instead of rats to experiment on. He gave three reasons for this trend.
First, he explained, that there were more lawyers available than rats.
Second, he said that the lab technicians did not become as emotionally attached to the lawyers as they do to the cute little cuddly furry rats,
And the final reason given for preferring the lawyers over the rats was that there are simply some things that rats refuse to do!
In the less cerebral Benighted States they say that you can tell if roadkill is a skunk or a lawyer because there might be skid marks before a skunk.
Substitute feral pig in this country.
The only thing that would stop prevent there being wasted space in a coachload of economists going over a cliff is if the otherwise empty seats had been snaffled by lawyers.
Apart from politicians and PR consultants, it is hard to think of occupations more deleterious
to the common weal.
and then there’s the old nautical term for sharks: “sea lawyers”
As Dick the Butcher in King Henry VI, part 2 act 4, demands “First we’ll kill all the lawyers”.
In the context of the play he’s a thuggish criminal with nihilistic views whose bright idea is to kill the educated. In these days he would be rabid for Trump. Get rid of the lawyers and you might as well get rid of law too.
There is the famous scene in A Man For All Seasons where Roper is at breaking point with frustration over the workings of the law:
William Roper: “So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!”
Sir Thomas More: “Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?”
William Roper: “Yes, I’d cut down every law in England to do that!”
Sir Thomas More: “Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned ’round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man’s laws, not God’s! And if you cut them down, and you’re just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake!”
The problem is not the law or lawyers. Both are necessary for any recognisable civil society. It is bad laws and bad lawyers.
Except for the equivocation of the last sentence, that’s a verbatim transcript of one I post here fairly regularly.
Gold star to Robert. I know I’ve heard it before, but it’s all in the timing.
I recently heard of a scam that cost a number of Australians quite a lot of money ^6 figures each) and relied on their greed and stupidity as most scams do. This exercise seems to involve both but with the greed on the side of Shylock and the stupidity on the side of the people who give them money for ‘nowt’.
“Shylock”? Really? I don’t see the relevance of this reference. Shylock was neither a scammer nor a lawyer. Let’s hope this has nothing to do with Shylock being Jewish.
He was a money lender, the only field open to his kin under Church rule in mercantile Venice.
Antonio, a dodgy importer, possibly fine herbs & exotic resins, borrowed bigly but his ship foundered.
He tried to void the contract by appealling to racism and bigotry.
Only Portia’s Jesuit sophistry saved him from himself.
That sums it up nicely. So the reference to Shylock in the original post remains unexplained and possibly inexplicable.
I took a subscription to Crikey in the hope to find some counterweight against the incessant propaganda we are subject to as far as the Covid story is concerned. I have now seen enough of this journalist’s stuff to decide that he is not going to provide it. He offers just more of the same.
Take this story for instance. He puts the emphasis on the activities of some law firms that, he hastens to say are not illegal, but, he suggests, rather unsavory all the same.
Well may be so – but is that the main point here?
That these firms arwe trying to use the situation to their advantage is nothing new. Law firms have always done so. And their selfish motives have nevertheless often contributed to the maintenance of the law.
What is new, I think, is that so many Australians are willing to pay quite substantial sums to support class action. What motivates them? Wilson could have done some real reporting here but apparently he felt that to be quite superfluous. He knew the answer in advance. The people who are willing to part with their hard earned dough here are just the denizens of “anti-vaccine and conspiracy communities”, of “online fringe and cospiracy groups”and the headline to his article makes it extra clear – these people are prey to “anti-vax, COVID denialist sentiment.” A press officer for Mr.Hazzard couldn’t have put it more forcefully.
And most of his commenters seem to agree.They mainly have a go at the lawyers, a fairvorite pastime of old, but their clients are not spared. In this case they seem to believe that deplorables are people with “limited intelligence “ , that they are “the credulous and foolish” who are paying a “tax on stupidity” ,
To judge from people in my own environment those who are not willing to have this dubious vaccination rammed down their throat, who feel that some of their basic rights are being violated, are neither against vaccinations as such nor do they deny that the Covid affliction is real (though they feel that it has been systematically exaggerated and has been turned into a pandemic of fear).
This is my own position. In my long life I have never refused a vaccination but this one came too uncredentialed to say “hail fellow well met .” And I fully agree with the lone commenter who thinks that this has all very little to do with public heallth.
Unlike Mr.Wilson some people felt that it was worthwhile to explore the background of those who are hesitant to get this particular jab. What is, for instance, their educational background? Well there is indeed considerable suspicion of it among the least educated but
Most vaccine-hesitant group is those with PhDs, research shows
COLLEGE FIX STAFF •AUGUST 12, 2021
“Most skeptical and least likely to change their minds, findings reveal
A study conducted by Carnegie Mellon University and University of Pittsburgh researchers found that vaccine hesitancy is highest among those with a PhD.
The online survey of more than 5 million adults was conducted between January 6 and May 31. People who said “probably not” or “definitely not” when asked if they would get the vaccine were considered vaccine hesitant.
“There was not a decrease in hesitancy among those with a professional degree or PhD,” the paper states.
A news release regarding the results explained further: “Hesitancy held constant in the most educated group (those with a Ph.D.); by May Ph.D.’s were the most hesitant group.”
Spot on comments. Why should anyone take an experimental mRNA vaccine for a virus that 99.7% of people outside of nursing homes will easily survive? BTY I have no PhD 🙂
What is the name of this fellow’s Company? Surely it is not Ripit,Grabit and Runn?
Then again, it could have possibly been that law firm, run by that well known legal entity, I. Fleecem.
Perhaps it’s a branch office of the Eye‘s London favourites – Sue, Grabbitt & Runwell.
Shyster and Shyster.
Dewey, Cheatham and Howe.