Markets 
A once-revered Melbourne barrister, Norman O’Bryan, has pleaded guilty to attempting to defraud the claimants in a class action, many of whom were already ripped-off retirees, out of millions of dollars.
The lawyer, from one of Victoria’s most esteemed legal families, pleaded guilty to one charge over his involvement in defrauding members of the Banksia Securities class action.
O’Bryan, who was the barrister for the class-action claimants and a funder of the action, was accused of drastically inflating the legal fees charged to members and the cut of any settlement that was paid by using fake invoices.
Another lawyer involved in the alleged fraud, Mark Elliott, died in 2020 in an accident on his farm.
Michael Stanton, SC, for the Director of Public Prosecutions, told the court that O’Bryan had drafted invoices for fees for claimants to pay in the class action known as the Bolitho proceeding.
“During November 2017 and February 2018, O’Bryan attempted to dishonestly obtain the payment of legal fees for a portion of settlement proceeds in the class action proceeding to which he was not entitled,” the court heard.
“On some of the dates that O’Bryan claimed to have done work in relation to the Bolitho proceeding, he was engaged in other matters … including court appearances. In other dates that O’Bryan claimed to have done work in relation to the Bolitho proceeding, he had not been present in Australia.”
The class-action claimants being represented by O’Bryan were suing their former investment manager Banksia Securities after it collapsed, wiping out $100 million in investments.
The class action was settled for $64 million in 2017 amid questions from claimants about the large fees charged by the lawyers running the case, including O’Bryan.
An investigation into the fees charged, requested by the court, later found that O’Bryan and others involved in litigating the case had added fees to the class-action claimants’ legal bill that were not warranted.
The exact amount of legal fees that were overcharged by some of the lawyers was unable to be fully assessed for the purposes for the criminal matter, but are estimated to be more than $1 million.
The court heard from members of the class action, many of whom were elderly and had already spent years chasing the retirement funds they had lost in the collapse of Banksia.
In a victim impact statement, Keith Pitman, a member of the committee put together to help represent class-action claimants, told the court O’Bryan’s offending had a huge impact on his mental health.
“I have been living and breathing this matter since 2018. My wife, Susan, tells me I am obsessed with it. She would also say that I am grumpier than I used to be. I haven’t been able to move on from it at all,” the court heard.
“It has been seven years of hell. The effect on me and my wife has been devastating. Not so much the monetary part of it, more the principle. I am 90 years old. Have been retired for 25 years. This had put a dark shadow on our latter years of retirement, I feel like it has been a slow motion robbery,” Pitman said.
The scandal marked a major fall from grace for the Oxford University-educated barrister and Rhodes Scholar who once ran hugely successful cases on behalf of the corporate watchdog in major white-collar crime cases.
O’Bryan is the son of Supreme Court judge Norman O’Bryan and the grandson of Sir Norman, who also sat on the bench at the court. His brother, Michael O’Bryan, is a current Federal Court judge.
O’Bryan himself was also a member of the Takeovers Panel and sat on the board of prestigious private school Carey Baptist Grammar for a decade.
He was declared bankrupt in 2020 and was struck off from being a lawyer the same year. He also handed back his Order of Australia in 2020, which was awarded for his services to a range of charities.
More to come
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Sarah Danckert is a senior reporter who specialises in investigations and corporate wrongdoing. She is a two-time Walkley Award winner, and has won six Quill Awards and two Kennedy Awards.Connect via X or email.From our partners
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