Lawyers for the environmental activist Ben Pennings say the long-running case against him brought by the mining company Adani should be thrown out as an “abuse of process”, telling the Queensland supreme court the remaining claims are “embarrassing”, “incredibly weak” and “highly problematic”.

The activist’s barrister, Michael Hodge KC, told a hearing in Brisbane on Monday that Adani had already abandoned the “primary cause of action” in its case against Pennings, when last year it dropped claims he unlawfully accessed confidential information.

Hodge told the court that Adani’s claim – that these contracts collapsed due to specific “demands and threats” by Pennings – was not supported by any contemporaneous evidence.

He said the case was “highly problematic” and amounted to an abuse of process because Adani had made and maintained claims about the loss of those contracts that bear “no resemblance” to any evidence it had disclosed.

Claims that threats by Pennings had caused companies to withdraw from contracts were “inconsistent” with public statements made by Greyhound and Downer, including a statement by Downer to the Australian Stock Exchange in 2017, Hodge said.

🏛️⚖️You can support Ben by donating towards his legal fund: https://chuffed.org/project/dadvsadani

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