The price of justice? $240,000 (US$162,175) in Australia. At least that's what one woman was ordered to pay after winning her wrongful arrest lawsuit.
Monica Smit, founder of the pro-freedom activist group Rekindle Democracy Australia (RDA) and a thorn in Australia's side, was arrested three times during COVID-19 lockdown protests in Victoria, Australia. As an independent journalist, Smit was covering the demonstrations in Melbourne, the capital of Victoria, on October 31, 2020, when local newspaper The Age called Melbourne “the city with the toughest lockdown in the world.”
Abandoned village
Smit sued the police for false arrest, and the government offered her $15,000 (US$10,136) in settlement in exchange for dropping the lawsuit, but she refused. “I refused because I wanted 'my day in court,'” she wrote in an opinion piece for LifeSiteNews.
“Once you receive the money, you can continue to claim you were wronged, but it won't end,” she explained. “It will always be your word against theirs” (emphasis in original).
Of course, the government wanted her to settle at taxpayers' expense to avoid public embarrassment and liability, Smit pointed out.
You fly off into the sunset with your “hush money” and bribes, while nothing changes for everyone else. The government continues to be emboldened by its unlimited power, becoming ever more convinced of its invincibility. The “little people” like you and me remain in our own circles, accepting that we are victims but powerless against the powers that be.
But Smit, who admits he's “a bit crazy by nature,” couldn't let go of his beliefs.
I don't see success in monetary terms. For me, it has always been about using my voice for those who have no voice. Thousands of Victorians have been abused during the COVID lockdown, but they don't have the resources to seek justice for themselves. The $15,000 offer did not come with any form of justice. It was an offer to milk taxpayers' money to get me to shut up and go away.
I would never do that and I don't care what the consequences are. The “safe option” for me is never the right option.
Even if you lose, you can't win
So Smit continued his case, acting as his own unpaid lawyer and having to pay $1,500 (US$1,014) per day in court costs, instead of the four government lawyers who were paid to appear in court every day.
After a 13-day trial spanning more than seven weeks, Smit was found not guilty – or at least she thought so. According to news.com.au:
The Victorian Court ruled on Thursday that two of the three arrests were unlawful because the government had failed to prove the requirements for a summary arrest under section 458 of the Criminal Code in those cases.
“Smit was arrested three times and found to have been wrongfully imprisoned on two of those occasions,” County Court Judge Mai Anh Tran wrote in her ruling, noting that “the human right to liberty is accorded special and enduring protection in case law.”
The judge awarded Smit $4,000 (US$2,703) in damages, but because this was less than the settlement amount she was offered, she lost in the eyes of the law. As a result, she was ordered to pay the government's $240,000 legal costs.
“How can you win a lawsuit and then pay over $240,000 for the joy of winning?” Smit asked.
“How can justice be served for all when it costs so much?” she asked. “The answer is simple: justice is not served for all. In fact, it is served to almost no one.”
Enthralled by the Just Us System
“How naive I was to think that I could seek justice and get away with it unscathed,” Smit wrote.
Indeed, by the time her punishment for overthrowing the government was handed down, Smit must have had no illusions about the state's treatment of freedom-loving people, as she herself points out:
A year after this first incident, I was arrested again and charged with sedition. I was given bail terms that could have been written in Communist China. They asked me to close my business, which had six or seven staff members and hundreds of thousands of members. My website had been viewed over five million times that year, and they asked for it to be shut down.
I refused to sign the strict bail conditions and was sent to a maximum security prison and placed in solitary confinement while awaiting an appeal against the conditions. I won the appeal and was released. I pleaded “not guilty” and the charges were dropped shortly thereafter. I intend to fight my incarceration despite the difficulties I faced in my recent court case.
All this, she noted, is meant to deter her and other victims in the state from seeking justice.
But Smit has no plans to go away quietly. Though she claims the trial has been “the most stressful thing I've ever done in my life,” she plans to continue her false imprisonment lawsuit, which she hopes will “highlight the unfairness of our justice system,” along with the fines she receives from winning other cases.
“I feel completely at peace because I did my best and had pure intentions,” she declared. “I leave the rest in God's hands.”
