The Federal Court has again shown itself to be a brutal arena for rebuilding reputations. In Justice Walter Sofronoff’s case, the court has backed the Integrity Commission’s conclusion of serious corrupt conduct.

If you arrived here from Mars in the last two years, you might think that the Federal Court is a weird place where prominent people go and spend a lot of money to ensure that their previously damaged reputations can get permanently shredded.

Ben Roberts-Smith went in a Victoria Cross winner and came out with a civil judicial finding that he was a murderer.

Bruce Lehrmann’s sex-crime trial was aborted. It was decided, out of fears for the complainant’s welfare, that he would not be retried. What to do? For reputation’s sake, go to the Federal Court – only to hear Justice Michael Lee utter the killer line: “Having escaped the lions’ den, Mr Lehrmann made the mistake of going back for his hat."

This week, Justice Walter Sofronoff, KC, rounded out the recent trifecta of big-time Federal Court losers.

Sofronoff had been appointed by the ACT Government to determine if the investigation into the aborted Lehrmann criminal trial had been affected by political influence or interference. He was found to have had extensive contact with one particular journalist and to have leaked his report to that journalist and one other. The ACT Integrity Commission found his conduct throughout the inquiry’s seven months fell within several elements of the definition of “corrupt conduct” in the Integrity Commission Act.

So, very quickly, Sofronoff sought relief in the Federal Court, on a dozen grounds.

These included that the commission had wrongly interpreted “corrupt conduct” in the Act, that its finding of potentially “serious corrupt conduct” was “seriously illogical, irrational and/or unreasonable”.

Those three bases were relied on also against the commission’s findings that Sofronoff had made disclosures otherwise than “on a good-faith basis by ordinary standards of probity”; that he had demonstrated “a lack of fidelity and good faith”; that he had acted in conscious disregard of his statutory functions; and that he was “dishonest” and “deceitful” in not disclosing to Chief Minister Andrew Barr that he intended to give an embargoed copy of his report to journalists.

Written submissions on his behalf included reference to the fact there was no evidence (nor any finding) that he received (or expected to receive) any benefit of any kind from engaging with the journalists nor that he sought to pursue any identified personal interest, nor any identified interest of any third party.

“The [commission’s] construction impermissibly stretches the definitions of ‘corrupt conduct’ and ‘serious corrupt conduct’ beyond the limits of the concept of corruption that emerges from the context of the Integrity Commission Act as a whole…” the submissions said. “Many of the [commission’s] findings were seriously illogical, irrational or unreasonable, or were findings for which there was no evidence. This includes the grave findings of dishonesty, bad faith and actual partiality for which there was no evidence and which lacked any rational foundation.”

The commission report was leaked after it was sent to the ACT Government but before the Government made it public. Sofronoff submitted it was an essential part of the work of the inquiry for the public to be informed about the issues presented. This could be achieved by engaging with journalists, it being “within the power of an inquiry head to ensure that what is written is written upon a true factual and conceptual basis”.

Justice Wendy Abraham, though not with the rhetorical flourishes of Justice Lee, wasn’t buying.

The 307 paragraphs of her judgment are heavy-going, a dense read in the extreme. They deal (for 73 paragraphs) with the intervention of the Speaker of the Legislative Assembly about parliamentary privilege, and quote at length from statute and the commission’s report. A marker of just how legalistic and thorough this judgment is is the placement of the sub-heading “Preliminary observations” just before paragraph 96.

Among these observations was mention of Section 36 of the Inquiries Act, under which the commission had originally suggested Sofronoff’s conduct could have constituted an offence of contempt of court. The commission had accepted that it erred in that conclusion. This was Sofronoff’s only “win” out of the 12 grounds put. He put some store on it, though, contending that it necessarily followed that jurisdictional error had been established and that the conceded error regarding s36 could not be disentangled from the balance of matters that led to the commission’s finding of “serious corrupt conduct”. But Justice Abraham found the error was not material, and proceeded, most thoroughly, to reject Sofronoff’s contentions and endorse the commission’s.

While the judgment might offer little in the running to general readers, the bottom line shone through the further you pressed:

At 283-84: “The applicant’s [Sofronoff] submission does not properly grapple with the terms of the Integrity Commission Act, its purpose and its context.

“The applicant has not established error in the commission’s approach …”

At 288: “The applicant has not established that the finding of serious corrupt conduct is either unreasonable, irrational and/or illogical.

And, at 306-7: “The applicant has not established jurisdictional error, and the commission’s conclusions that Mr Sofronoff engaged in serious corrupt conduct remains … the application is dismissed.”

We wait to see what – if anything – ACT Attorney-General Tara Cheyne might do with the commission’s confirmed findings.

And, of course, to see which prominent person might be next to walk into the reputational threshing machine of the federal judiciary.