r/AFL • u/HUMMEL_at_the_5_4eva • 4d ago
Editorialised Title Free man of the land, Warren Treadrea loses (again). Must pay costs.
https://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/south-australia/warren-tredrea-loses-court-bid-to-avoid-paying-nine-network-legal-costs-in-alleged-wrongful-dismissal-fight/news-story/d484262ef5f3144888417f6a20a18f6b?amp&nk=b234a0efb58b1c87329f5ffdb9dbd0cc-175703751895
u/five_line_poem West Coast 4d ago
"Those two pages are written in a style, and using language, that is evidently designed to appear highly technical and legalistic. They are in reality incomprehensible and legally meaningless, but it is evident that they purport to constitute terms of a contract."
I do enjoy reading these sorts of decisions!
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u/Pottski Hawthorn 4d ago
Turn his utilities off and stop picking up his garbage. If he wants a sovcit life he can live in the squalor that a society-less world would operate in.
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u/_yetifeet Cats 4d ago
Sovcits are like house cats. They think they are proud, rugged individualists, but in reality they are all welfare queens. They don't recognise anything other than their benefit payments.
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u/BlueDotty Port Adelaide 4d ago
It's just embarrassing
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u/JRicho_Sauce Dockers 4d ago
Not been a great 24hrs for the state of South Australia
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u/AgentMiffa Essendon 4d ago
A South Australia game dev crashed steam and the Nintendo e shop today, so one positive for them.
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u/legally_blond Brisbane AFLW 4d ago
Of course he's a promissory note guy
Oh this bit is good
Those two pages are written in a style, and using language, that is evidently designed to appear highly technical and legalistic. They are in reality incomprehensible and legally meaningless, but it is evident that they purport to constitute terms of a contract.
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u/Ardeo43 Cats 4d ago
Most of the remaining paragraphs of the affidavit are drafted in a confusing and pseudo-legalistic style, often using double or triple negatives to introduce what are really (wrong) legal arguments. They are exemplified by [16] of the affidavit, which states:
I have not seen or been presented with any material facts or evidence that shows to not accept payment by way of promissory note is not a commercial default and dishonour upon the defaulting party and does not automatically discharge all liability against the maker by reason a payment refused discharges all liability to pay a debt, and I believe sincerely that none exists.
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u/jimbsmithjr Essendon 4d ago
So if I am understanding correctly, his argument is that them not accepting an IOU should mean he no longer has to pay anything? God I'd love to be able to pull that one on my landlord or electricity bills. What a fuckin idiot, writing in the most convoluted bullshit way trynna rules lawyer and technicality their way out of anything that doesn't suit.
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u/Bashnek North Melbourne 4d ago
This, but also that they needed to dispute that IOU within 3 days if they had any issues with it and then claimed to have sent it on the 26th (but actually sent it on the 29th). Real old school swindler shit
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u/moosewiththumbs #NepoBabies 4d ago
There probably was a problem at the post office or somethin’
Sometimes I scribble addresses too sloppy when I jot ‘em
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u/BIllyBrooks Hawthorn ✅ 4d ago
I bet you he can show a TikTok that proves this method works though - you just haven't done the research.
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u/legally_blond Brisbane AFLW 4d ago
Yep. Unfortunately it's something you see a lot from sov cits and it's such a waste of time having to respond to it
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u/Kozeyekan_ Kangaroos 4d ago
This just reads like it was written by a little kid playing imaginary space battles.
"Nuh-uh, your space laser didn't get me because I have a super shield that deflects lasers, so it really bounced off and hit you in the butt!"
just swap out the terminology and you have the whole SovCit movement.
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u/inhumanfriday Footscray '54 4d ago
Damn, the SovCits movement really taking a few Ls lately. Starting to hurt their credibility.
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u/Timbo2702 Adelaide 4d ago
They had any to begin with?
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u/inhumanfriday Footscray '54 4d ago
That's enslaved man talk. I only take to upper case Free Man(s).
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u/MuseCommunity Port Adelaide 4d ago
Advertiser article text:
Warren Tredrea loses court bid to avoid paying Nine Network legal costs in alleged wrongful dismissal fight
Warren Tredrea’s long-running legal battle with Nine has ended with the former AFL star in significant debt. Read the letter three judges called “incomprehensible”.
Warren Tredrea stated, in his court documents, “I am not dead” – but on Friday, a court ruled his “incomprehensible and legally meaningless” bid to off-set his $149,000 debt to the Nine Network most certainly was.
In a unanimous judgment, the Full Court of the Federal Court ordered Tredrea pay all of Nine’s costs, bringing to an end the long-running, Covid-fuelled stoush between the former commercial partners. In its judgment, the court said many of Tredrea’s arguments were “confusing and pseudo-legalistic” and his purported IOU “a waste of time” that is “strongly to be discouraged”.
His court documents, it said, contained “various elaborate but legally meaningless expressions” and “obvious and unnecessary” statements including “I am not dead”.
It said those papers “often” used “double and triple negatives to introduce what are really wrong legal arguments”.
Tredrea did not appear in court in person for the judgment, instead dialling in by video link.
He appeared to shake his head as the decision was handed down.
Previously, Tredrea was ordered to reimburse Nine’s legal costs incurred by his attempt to resurrect his failed wrongful dismissal lawsuit.
In court papers filed in June, Tredrea insisted he had covered that debt with a legal IOU because Australia has no “gold or silver coins” in circulation.
In those documents, he also claimed he is “not an entity” nor a “legal person, citizen or resident” but a “private man” whose “yes be yes” and “no be no”.
Tredrea has publicly and repeatedly denied any suggestion he is a sovereign citizen.
In their 23-page judgment, Justices Melissa Perry, Timothy McEvoy and Stephen McDonald said that, in April 2025, Nine offered to settle the dispute.
They said Nine was willing to accept $126,000 from Tredrea but, instead of a “direct response”, received an affidavit and accompanying materials.
Those materials featured “several handwritten annotations in blue and red pen, initialled by Tredrea” and legal IOU – called a promissory note – for $140,000.
When Nine’s lawyers rejected the note, calling it “misconceived”, Tredrea sent it again to managing director Sean O’Brien.
“We will not attempt to describe the annotations exhaustively,” the court says in its judgment.
“But we note that they include the words ‘Accepted as Indorsed’ in red pen, initialled by Mr Tredrea in blue pen.
“Various other annotations appear in blue pen and are initialled by Mr Tredrea.”
It says it “is not necessary to set out the terms and text” of Mr Tredrea’s other materials.
“Those two pages are written in a style, and using language, that is evidently designed to appear highly technical and legalistic,” it says.
“They are in reality incomprehensible and legally meaningless, but it is evident that they purport to constitute terms of a contract.”
It says Tredrea’s note gave Nine 72 hours to respond and, if it did not, it would have “accepted it in full and final satisfaction of the alleged debt”.
Nine again refused the note, triggering June’s court hearing.
Justices Perry, McEvoy and McDonald unanimously agreed Tredrea’s promissory note “did not discharge the debt arising from the costs order” of the failed appeal.
“The quasi-legalistic language that appears in those two documents does not achieve anything, apart from making the documents difficult to understand,” the court said.
“The creation and use of documents of this kind is a waste of time, and is strongly to be discouraged.”
It said Tredrea’s “assumptions” about Federal law, underpinning his belief in the promissory note, were “wrong” – as was his description of himself as a “banker”.
“(Tredrea) asserted he ‘is an incorporated or unincorporated body of persons involved in the business of banking’,” it said.
“This does not reflect the terms of the definition of ‘Banker’ in (Federal law), which actually refers to a body of persons ‘who carry on the business of banking’.
“Mr Tredrea is not a body of persons.”
Tredrea’s assertion the IOU was secured against his birth certificate, it said, “misapprehend the nature of a birth certificate and the meaning of a security, a financial instrument and a financial institution”.
His assertions about other matters, including Australian currency, had already been dealt with and disproved in earlier, separate, unrelated court cases, it said.
“All of the submissions relied on by Tredrea are misconceived,” it said.
Nine had quoted its legal costs of the appeal at $149, 210.70 which the court found “surprisingly high”, and fixed the amount payable at $149,000.
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u/Dudersaurus Adelaide 4d ago
I like the last bit.
"$149,210.70? Bloody outrageous! $149,000, and not a penny more".
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u/Severe-Associate5922 Power 4d ago
This is the guy my fellow Port members elected onto the board, huh?
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u/skywideopen3 Sydney Swans 4d ago
This is a good remember that as much as the adherents of this terrorist ideology want to claim it's all about individual freedom from government, it's mostly about finding fancy ways to steal from people.
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u/platewithhotdogs Leprechaun 4d ago
Normally I’d take the piss out of him but after what has happened over in Victoria - this kind of thinking is clearly in ‘danger to others’ territory.
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u/Portra400IsLife The Dons 4d ago
Absolutely he should be under Asio surveillance like all of those who risk the existence of Australia should be.
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u/Vet100 4d ago
Again, all of this could have been avoided if he accepted the court decision initially (for the court case he started, despite not believing in the courts/legal system). Initially Nine were happy to waive the legal fees & just move on - it was his appeal that made them say enough is enough, pay our legal fees. Which of course, if you truly believed in such whackery that Tredrea does, you never would have to pay because you wouldn’t sue anyone for wrongful dismissal, you’d just make them write an IOU and collect your 5 million in silver & gold (eventually).
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u/Portra400IsLife The Dons 4d ago
Cant we just put sovcits into prison as befitting the terrorist they are?
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u/Ardeo43 Cats 4d ago
Big if true.