Given the Supreme Court found Coffey was not an employee of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Ballarat, the issue before the High Court was whether the boundaries of vicarious liability should be extended to include relationships that are “akin to employment”.
Accounting for the decades of precedent, the bench answered no.
Maurice Blackburn’s principal lawyer in its abuse compensation practice, John Rule, said the decision would mean the church “will be able to again evade responsibility for the scourge of child abuse”.
“This decision puts Australia at odds with other common law jurisdictions like the UK and Canada who have developed the principle of vicarious liability to meet the scourge of child abuse,” he said.
However, in two decisions released alongside this, the High Court upheld the principle that permanent stays should only be used in exceptional circumstances for historic abuse cases.
Rule said the decisions were welcomed so survivors of child sexual abuse are not “excluded” from securing justice “simply because their abuser died before they came forward”.
The Coffey case is Bird v DP (a pseudonym) [2024] HCA 41.
Source: High Court upholds 25 years of ‘harsh’ precedent in historic abuse case – Lawyers Weekly