A man's $300,000 damages award for being wrongfully jailed by a judge during divorce proceedings could be under threat with the federal and Queensland governments mounting a legal challenge.
In a landmark judgment delivered in August, the Federal Court found that Judge Salvatore Vasta was liable to personally pay part of the compensation offered to the Brisbane man, known only by the pseudonym Mr Stradford.
The father-of-two was jailed in December 2018 for a minimum of six months for not obeying orders to provide financial documents during divorce proceedings.
The sentence was overturned and the man released after six nights when the decision to jail him was strongly criticised by an appeals court.
In August, Justice Michael Wigney found that Judge Vasta, a Federal Circuit Court judge, made "a number of fundamental and egregious errors" in jailing Mr Stradford for contempt without first finding that he had failed to comply with the court's orders.
"The applicant in this proceeding was the victim of a gross miscarriage of justice," Justice Wigney said.
"He was detained and imprisoned for contempt following what could fairly be described as little more than a parody of a court hearing."
Justice Wigney also found the Commonwealth and Queensland vicariously liable for Mr Stradford's imprisonment.
They were left on the hook to pay part of the $300,000 in compensation for an ordeal that left the Brisbane man with PTSD and major depressive disorder.
Both state and federal governments filed an appeal of these findings in the Full Court on Wednesday afternoon with a hearing yet to be scheduled.
Judge Vasta has not yet filed his own appeal.
August's judgment was the first in almost 60 years where a judge was found personally liable to pay damages.
During the hearing in 2021, Judge Vasta was compared to Lewis Carroll's Queen of Hearts for his courtroom behaviour.
"Your Honour may recall her catchphrase was 'sentence first - verdict afterwards'," Mr Stradford's barrister Perry Herzfeld SC said at the time.
"That's what happened here - but there was never a verdict."
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