Jeff Sher interview 18 November 2009

I wondered earlier, do you feel your particular talent is (in) establishing a reasonable doubt in people's minds? Is that your specific talent, or do you think it's more along the lines of other things? Obviously you have, and you would need, forensic skills to make the kinds of arguments that you're doing, but I just get this impression sometimes, listening to you, that that's your particular forte.

Well, perhaps it is. I've never really thought of it like that. I mean, in criminal cases obviously that's what you're trying to do. I mean, you're not really trying to prove innocence, although occasionally you can and do, but civil cases are different.

Let's look at some of the other cases that you've done. You've done some very high profile cases and speaking of medical issues, although this isn't strictly a medical issue, you acted for Shane Warne.

Right, well, Shane... It was interesting, it did have a medical issue. I'd done a lot of work over the years for the Australian Cricket Board in advising them. I gave them advice about going to Zimbabwe and advised them that they should tell the minister to use his powers under the Passport Control Act or the Passport Act. The idea didn't really emanate with me, it emanated with my junior who was a pretty smart guy, but we wrote a joint opinion and gave it to the ACB, who passed it on to the minister and he used it and the Aussie test team didn't go to Zimbabwe as a consequence. But I'd done a lot of work for them over the years. It's very interesting work. Anyway, when Shane got into strife, they asked me if I'd act for him. I might say I've never been in a case which attracted more media interest than this one. Shane had suffered an injury and made a pretty rapid recovery and the suspicion was that he'd taken something to enhance his recovery. In truth, what he'd done was, because he was, as we all know, (and I'm not saying anything derogatory of Shane, it may not be true today but it was in the past) he was a bit of a ladies' man, and he wanted to present himself as a somewhat sculpted figure so he took some of his mum's diuretics to lose weight. Diuretics are banned because they don't enhance performance, but they disguise performance-enhancing drugs. Anyway, you're not allowed to take them. So Shane had. In any event, it became apparent that he had, and they charged him under, oh, I forget what you call it now, but they'd charged him with an offence which could have resulted in up to a two-year suspension, which would have been disastrous for Shane financially and otherwise. They could have charged him with another offence for which the penalty was a maximum of three months, but when I asked the ACB lawyers why they hadn't charged him with that, they said they couldn't afford to because the world would have regarded them as having looked after him, so they charged him with a more serious offence. In any event, at the end of the day, we called medical evidence to show that his recovery was as expected, there was nothing suspicious about it. Shane gave evidence about taking mum's diuretics - and he had taken them - and I can't recall whether we called mum to give evidence. I think we did. So he ended up with a year's suspension, which was in some respects a good result but in other respects a bad one. He was caught taking diuretics. That's it.

Did you offer him any advice subsequently about perhaps a wholesome diet and a bit more exercise?

I left that to others. I don't think he's taken them since.

Certainly it hasn't cropped up in the newspapers again.

Conducted for the Victorian Bar oral history project by Juliette Brodsky, and filmed by Stewart Carter on 18 November 2009