Footy legend Darren Lockyer is caught up in $21million legal fight that could see him forced to make huge compensation payout

NRL great Darren Lockyer has been hit with a damages lawsuit over an alleged breach of duties as director of a mining labour-hire company he used to part-own.

In a lawsuit filed in Brisbane’s Supreme Court on May 31, the liquidator of One Key Workforce Pty Ltd (OKW) claims Lockyer breached his directors’ duties to gain an advantage for another company, OKR Coal.

The former Queensland and Broncos captain is one of seven defendants, along with OKR Coal, which OKW claims should foot the compensation.

According to the Courier Mail, the liquidator has also asked the court to order fellow directors Grant Bernard Wechsel, Jonathan James Johnson, Stuart Andrew Hall and Dhirendra Shantilal to pay OKR compensation for the alleged breaches. 

Johnson and Hall are both based in the UK, while Shantilal is based in Singapore.

OKW suffered losses of around $21million, before being wound up in 2018 due to owning millions in payments to its former ‘casual’ staff.

Most of the company’s 2,300 employees across its engineering and production roles in the coal mining industry were employed on a casual basis. But from November 2017 to August 2018, over 900 OKW staff took up employment with OKR Coal.

However, the company’s enterprise agreement was overturned in court after been deemed invalid by the Construction Forestry Maritime Mining and Energy Union.

The union argued the agreement should not stand as it had only been voted on by a small number of workers. 

As a result of the court’s decision, thousand of casual workers fell back to the industry award, which bans casuals who have subsequently converted to permanent staff.

‘The migration of OKW’s workforce to OKR Coal was not in the best interests of OKW, resulting in OKW losing a valuable asset, namely its workforce, without realising anything for the value of the workforce, and was highly advantageous to OKR Coal, and to its shareholders […] in that OKR Coal acquired the workforce without having to pay OKW anything for it,’ the claim states.

‘By causing or permitting OKW to participate in the operation of migrating the OKW workforce to OKR Coal, each of the directors failed to have any, or any sufficient, regard to the interests of the creditors of OKW.

Lockyer (left) has been part of Channel Nine’s commentary team after retiring from footy

Lockyer (right) won four premierships with the Broncos under Wayne Bennett (left)

‘Each of the directors, acted in contravention of (company law) in that they were not acting in the best interests of OKW.’ 

The liquidator has also sued law firm Ashurst Australia, claiming it caused or contributed OKW’s $21million loss through breach of contract and negligence. 

In the lawsuit, OKR claims the $21million consists of the loss of the market value of the OKW workforce of $6.3m and $14.9m attributed to additional liabilities to its staff.

The latter figure is alleged to be made up of benefits provided for by the industry award but not by the enterprise agreement over a 10-month period to August 2018.