Lawyer maintains grudge against former workplace

A solicitor who received supervised training at a boutique law firm has persisted with a seemingly endless vendetta against the principal.

Despite losing six Fair Work Commission (FWC) proceedings, a Federal Court hearing, and an attempt in the High Court, solicitor Prateek Patial has pressed on with a claim he was unfairly dismissed from Sydney boutique firm Kailash Lawyers & Consultants.

According to FWC deputy president Michael Easton, who heard the latest application made by Patial in the Fair Work Commission, there have been “many observations” made about the “unprofessional way” Patial has conducted proceedings despite having legal qualifications.

“[This is] including observations that he had made claims and appeals that he was not entitled to make and that he had improperly attempted to use the Fair Work Commission proceedings to prosecute gripes and complaints that the commission has no jurisdiction to deal with,” Easton said in his written reasons.

In the first of the proceedings, heard in August 2021, commissioner Donna McKenna determined Patial could not have been unfairly dismissed from Kailash Lawyers because he was never an employee.

According to that judgment, Patial turned up unannounced at Kailash Lawyers in April 2019 for legal supervision in connection with his practising requirements, having only recently been admitted to the Supreme Court of NSW. Relevantly, Patial had been partway through his supervision with another firm but left after a dispute.

Feeling “sympathetic” towards Patial, the director agreed to the supervision, but Patial was never an employee. Instead, he worked out of Kailash Lawyers under “non-employee arrangements”.

In August 2020, having supposedly been “highly personally affronted” by a comment made by the director, the two got into a heated discussion, and Patial refused to leave the premises.

Both called the police, and Patial was escorted out of the law firm.

McKenna said they each made complaints against the other with the Law Society and Legal Services Commissioner.

After his unfair dismissal application failed before McKenna, Patial attempted to appeal before a full bench. This and four other attempts to revive his claim failed.

When the matter reached the Federal Court, Chief Justice Debra Mortimer said Patial made “scandalous allegations, unsupported by any evidence of substance”, including that the director was involved in illegal activities, committed perjury, and tampered with evidence.

Chief Justice Mortimer found Patial’s application was “frivolous, vexatious, and an abuse of the court’s process”.

In dismissing the most recent application, Easton found some parts were “nonsense” and others “entirely hopeless”.

“I am not prepared to entertain the possibility that further resources will be wasted by conducting a full hearing on this new application that otherwise appears legally hopeless,” Easton said.