Brisbane judge’s ruling overturned by Family Court as a ‘gross miscarriage of justice’
A Brisbane judge who sentenced a father of two to jail for contempt of court in a family law case has been sharply criticised by Family Court appeal judges, who described his decision as an “affront to justice”.
Key points:
- Judge Salvatore Vasta had no power to jail a man for contempt, the Family Court declared
- Three Family Court judges called the man’s imprisonment “a gross miscarriage of justice”
- They said Judge Vasta had “no factual foundation” for the order
Last December, Brisbane-based Judge Salvatore Vasta sentenced a man involved in a property dispute with his ex-wife to a maximum 12 months in jail for failing to disclose financial documents on time.
The man, who has two children aged five and nine, spent six days in a maximum-security prison.
He was released pending the outcome of an appeal on the decision.
In a ruling handed down earlier this month, the Full Court of the Family Court overruled Judge Vasta’s decision, with justices Peter Murphy, Michael Kent and Steven Strickland declaring they were comfortably satisfied that “what occurred here in the making of the declaration and order for the husband’s imprisonment constituted a gross miscarriage of justice”.
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