By Cam Lucadou-Wells
‘Slug gate’ is back in the courts after commercial kitchen I Cook Foods launched a fresh lawsuit against Greater Dandenong Council.
ICF is suing the council’s public health coordinator Leanne Johnson and environmental health officer Elizabeth Garlick as well as the council for alleged “malicious prosecution”.
In a writ filed at the Victorian Supreme Court, Cook also accuses Johnson and Garlick of “misfeasance in public office”.
In February 2019, ICF was closed by then-Acting Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton as part of an investigation into a listeria-infected hospital patient’s death.
As a result, the Dandenong South based business didn’t trade again, and 41 employees lost their jobs.
Sutton had relied on Greater Dandenong’s inspections of the kitchen days before the shutdown, ICF argues.
During the inspection, Garlick allegedly planted a slug in the food prep area, according to the ICF writ.
She is also accused of falsely alleging that ICF was breaching the Food Act.
The council, Johnson and Garlick knew or ought to have known there was no evidence that the business supplied unsafe food or that its kitchen was unfit for making its food, ICF argues.
ICF has been reportedly seeking $50 million damages for the destruction of its business.
Director Ian Cook said the inspections were “instrumental” in a lot of damage being done.
“I’ve gone five years without an income. I couldn’t trade again because no one would touch me. A lot of my contracts were terminated.
“I will take it all the way unless Dandenong sits down and tries to talk with us and settle.“
Months after the inspections, Greater Dandenong charged Cook and ICF with nearly 200 food safety offences.
According to the ICF writ, this was done as a “form of validation or justification for the conduct of Johnson and/or Garlick and/or the Council which led to the closure order”.
The three defendants are also accused of tampering with evidence “in an unlawful endeavour to sustain the … prosecution”.
The council dropped all the charges at Dandenong Magistrates’ Court in October that year.
The latest legal action comes less than two weeks after Cook’s “bittersweet” victory in the same court.
On 13 November, the court ruled that Sutton’s shutdown of ICF was invalid due to depriving ICF of a prior opportunity to be heard.
However, Justice Michael McDonald found that Sutton’s conduct was not “recklessly indifferent” so didn’t meet the criteria for misfeasance. And damages were denied.
In July, I Cook Foods settled a separate civil case against Greater Dandenong Council, which has constantly denied wrongdoing.
“The fact that the claims were dropped shows that there was no substance to any of the claims made against Council and its officers,” Greater Dandenong chief executive Jacqui Weatherill stated at the time.
Greater Dandenong Council was contacted for comment.
