FWC dismisses lawyer’s costs application against former employer

The case centred on a lawyer, Rodney Veith, who had been employed as a legal practitioner by Hutchinson Legal. In June 2025, the firm informed Veith that his employment relationship with them had ended as he had repudiated his employment contract due to his conduct.

Later that month, Veith made an application under section 365 of the Fair Work Act, seeking FWC intervention in what he saw as a dismissal.

In August 2025, Hutchinson Legal raised an objection against Veith’s application in its Form F8A response, claiming Veith had not been dismissed, but had repudiated the employment contract.

However, in September 2025, Hutchinson Legal advised that it would no longer press the jurisdictional objection, prior to any party filing materials. Following this, Veith sought for Hutchinson Legal and its legal representative, Colin Biggers & Paisley, to pay his $5,941 in legal costs.

He argued that Hutchinson Legal’s objection “was without proper foundation and lacked any arguable merit or realistic prospect of success”, something he said it should have known as a law firm with expertise in employment law.

Veith also posited that the jurisdictional objection was only withdrawn after “considerable delay”.

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In coming to its decision, the court considered whether Hutchinson Legal had caused costs to be incurred due to an unreasonable act or omission, whether the firm had any reasonable prospects of success in its objection, and whether its response to Veith’s s 365 application was vexatious or without reasonable cause.

It found that the end of Veith’s employment relationship had been “highly contentious”, with disputed events including issues of conflicts of interest, opposing positions between Hutchinson Legal directors, and whether Veith repeatedly disobeyed lawful directions to not act in a proceeding.

Given the disputes between the parties that were not tested or resolved, the FWC said it could not conclude that Hutchinson Legal had been unreasonable in pressing its objection.

It added that because Hutchinson Legal’s objection was withdrawn five days after the case management conference and before witness statements and submissions were filed, the FWC could not accept Veith’s submission that the objection was withdrawn after “considerable delay”.

As such, the FWC dismissed Veith’s application for costs.

The FWC added that it would not have exercised its discretion to award costs to Veith, noting that it did not want to deter future respondents from withdrawing jurisdictional objections due to the risk of incurring costs.

“Respondents withdrawing jurisdictional objections in s 365 applications assist with the timely and informal resolution of such applications,” court documents said.

“That should be encouraged where appropriate, particularly where the withdrawing of a jurisdictional objection occurs early in the proceeding, such as was the case in this matter.”