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Despite her application having already been thrown out, a former employee of a Perth law firm tried to convince the Fair Work Commission to issue a stop-bullying order to the managing director and two external parties charged with investigating her complaints.
Carole Greenan, a former employee of Bowen Buchbinder Vilensky – or BBV Legal – has had her third attempt to secure a stop-bullying order thrown out by the Fair Work Commission after it found there was “no appealable error” in the earlier decisions.
In addition to naming managing director David Vilensky, Greenan asked for the order to include Croftbridge lawyer Tim Lethbridge and Bernard Mackin from Workplace Consulting Australia, who were involved with the firm during its investigation of her allegations.
There was no evidence the bullying allegation was founded.
Given that Greenan’s employment had been terminated prior to having made the stop-bullying application, Commissioner Paul Schneider found there was no risk of workplace bullying and that there should be no involvement with the three men outside of the legal proceedings.
Vice president Ingrid Asbury, deputy president Peter Anderson, and deputy president Ian Masson found Greenan’s numerous grounds of appeal were “discursive, repetitious and take the form of bare complaints or assertions of error without providing detail”.
In her second to fourth ground, Greenan aired “various grievances” with the in-person conference prior to the hearing because she alleged it was in contradiction of a promise she would not have to be in the same room with Vilensky, Lethbridge, or Mackin.
However, in addition to communications with Schneider’s associate, Greenan’s reluctance to attend the conference with the men was at odds with the solution she proposed to “return to the workplace while investigations into her complaints are being conducted”.
Nevertheless, the commission found nothing in the evidence before Schneider that would have outweighed him taking the “orthodox approach” of conducting a conference prior to a hearing.
Many of the grounds included assertions she was denied procedural fairness, including a claim Schneider had falsely stated she had been given an opportunity to reply to the respondents’ submissions.
A McKenzie friend known as Mr Naylor claimed there was no right of reply and it was “scandalous” for Schneider to suggest there was.
“The idea they referred to orders that they made when they did not make those orders, that should be on the front of a newspaper. And I put to you that those sorts of things are obvious errors,” he said.
“They are obviously fundamentally failures to abide by correct procedure and represent the worst of procedural unfairness, to say that she could not raise an objection there and then.”
Asbury, Anderson and Masson said that not only was this factually incorrect, but it was also “offensive and insulting” to Schneider.
They found Greenan could not claim she was unaware of the notice of listing and directions, which gave her the opportunity to file reply submissions, or an email that stated she would be given a “brief right of reply” to the material filed by the three respondents.
“Even allowing for the fact that the appellant is not legally represented, the assertions about the commissioner’s conduct should not have been made,” Asbury, Anderson and Masson said.
The bench was satisfied that Schneider correctly exercised his discretion to dismiss the stop-bullying order, particularly because Greenan was not employed by the firm at the time the application was made.
The case is Carole Greenan v BBV Legal Pty Ltd t/a Bowen Buchbinder Vilensky & Ors - [2025] FWCFB 61.
Naomi Neilson is a senior journalist with a focus on court reporting for Lawyers Weekly.
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