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Two companies avoid $54 million subcontractor lawsuit

Judge found subcontractor could not substantiate claims against Glen Carron and Garden Grove

 

Two South Australian bulk transport and haulage providers have seen a $54 million lawsuit against them thrown out in the state’s Supreme Court.

Clayton Wentworth, trading as Nanosecond Corporation, was subcontracting between February 2015 to April 2017 for Glen Carron Pty Ltd and Garden Grove, who stopped using his services after allegations “that reflected poorly on his competence as a professional driver”, Justice Sam Doyle notes in a judgement that has only recently been reported on.

The 69-year-old subcontractor alleged “misconduct involving injurious falsehood, defamation, misleading and deceptive conduct, and an unlawful conspiracy to cause harm”, seeking damages for the losses claimed to have been suffered as a result.

“According to Mr Wentworth, his work for the defendants from early 2015 through to early 2017 was essentially without incident or complaint. However, in light of the body of evidence that emerged during the trial, I am satisfied that there were a number of incidents and complaints,” Doyle says.

The complaints included erratic driving, “that he had tried to run some other trucks off the road”, and that he had been banned from picking up grain at two sites.


SARTA backed Garden Grove in its driver dismissal case in 2017. Read more, here


Doyle notes Wentworth would react poorly to any challenge by witnesses to his competence.

“Mr Wentworth’s position and evidence throughout the trial was that he was a highly competent heavy combination vehicle driver, and that any suggestion to the contrary was “total unadulterated nonsense”, a “complete fabrication”, and essentially a perpetuation of the malicious conspiracy by various people to falsely accuse him of incompetence and to withdraw work from him.”

Wentworth failed to substantiate those claims, according to Doyle.

The case was also built around covert recordings that were meant to support his claims but were found to have been “heavily (and in several respects, misleadingly) edited by him”.

“Importantly, several of the edits made to the recordings altered the meaning of parts of the conversations,” Doyle says.

Doyle also criticised the amount sought, based on projections of lost net income, as “unrealistic” and “illustrative of the lack of objectivity and reality brought to these proceedings”, especially as, being a subcontractor, the defendands denied there was ever a guarantee of work on an ongoing basis.

All claims against Glen Carron and Garden Grove were subsequently dismissed.

 

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