• Stephen Keim

07 January 2010Professor Ian Plimer is famous for using litigation to settle disputes going to core beliefs, writes Stephen Keim in On Line Opinion

PROFESSOR Ian Plimer is famous for using litigation to settle disputes going to core beliefs. In the 1990s, Professor Plimer sued Dr Allen Roberts, an elder of the Hills Bible Church in Sydney, for misleading or deceptive conduct in breach of the Trade Practices Act 1974. The litigation concerned statements made by Dr Roberts in a Christian Science Foundation lecture tour conducted in April to June 1992.

In 1997, Justice Ron Sackville of the Federal Court found that Dr Roberts had made three misleading statements concerning suggestions that Roberts, himself, had carried out archaeological research on boat like formations in Mt Ararat. Professor Plimer, having won three battles, lost the war when Justice Sackville found that the misleading statements were not made in trade or commerce such that the Trade Practices Act had no relevant application. Professor Plimer, in the same year, also lost on appeal in Plimer v Roberts (1997) FCA 1361 when three further members of the Federal Court concurred in Justice Sackville’s view that the Trade Practices Act was not applicable...

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