Palmer-supported vaccine injury case 'incoherent'
"Unintelligible" allegations in a class action supported by Clive Palmer over claimed COVID-19 vaccine injuries have been thrown out.
The lawsuit, filed by three men on behalf of all Australians adversely affected by COVID-19 vaccines, seeks damages from the federal government which approved the Pfizer, Moderna and AstraZeneca jabs.
But trying to understand their case has proven difficult for both the government and the Federal Court.
When the fifth iteration of the statement of claim came in the length of a large novel, Justice Anna Katzmann on Thursday grappled with whether to bin all 819 pages.
"The answer to this question is an emphatic yes," she wrote.
"Large parts of it are incoherent, unintelligible, ambiguous, impenetrable and/or expressed at a high level of generality."
The document was accurately described by the class action's own barrister as "tortuous," Justice Katzmann said.
In particular, the men were asked to explain precisely how the federal government and four senior officials engaged in negligence and misfeasance by approving the vaccines and making public statements about them.
The misfeasance claim extended 74 pages and was "hopelessly vague".
"By no stretch of the imagination do the (annexed) schedules compensate for this,'
"They simply send the reader on a wild goose chase."
Despite her grave doubts however, Justice Katzmann gave the trio one more chance to fix up their statement of claim.
She also knocked back an attempt by the federal government to have the plaintiffs tip in $312,000 as security to cover the government's future legal costs.
Clive Palmer's company Mineralogy offered to stump up the security and also offered to provide "its personal promise" to the government in lieu of other forms of security, the court was told.
But the judge put little weight in Mineralogy's promise in the absence of evidence about its financial position.
Mr Palmer told reporters in 2022 he did not regret being unvaccinated despite being hospitalised with the COVID Delta strain and double pneumonia.
Justice Katzmann said the lawsuit would likely cost tens, if not hundreds, of millions of dollars if it continued all the way to final judgment.
The class action's primary backer, a Queensland doctor, has raised more than $558,000 through crowdfunding to pay for legal costs.
Melissa McCann has also taken out several loans and sold her commercial beachfront property to help fund the case, the judgment revealed.
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