Gray on 'Sponsor Pressure to Discipline Employees Who Have Expressed Unwelcome Views and Reform of the Business Torts in Australia'

Professor Anthony Gray of the USQ School of Law and Justice has published an article titled 'Sponsor Pressure to Discipline Employees Who Have Expressed Unwelcome Views and Reform of the Business Torts in Australia'.  The article appears in Volume 47(5) of the Australian Business Law Review.  Here is the abstract: 

"This article focuses on a suggestion that the current litigation involving footballer Israel Folau may involve an action by him against sponsors of his employer, if it could be shown that there was some link between sponsor concerns about public comments made and Mr Folau’s eventual termination. The article cannot answer the question specifically about Mr Folau’s case, but the suggestion raises important questions about Australia’s current regime of business torts. The article considers two important questions in this regard. First, whether Australian business law should recognise a tort of unlawful, intentional interference with trade or business, and secondly, if it does, how that tort would sit with the existing business torts of inducing breach of contract, conspiracy and intimidation. The article suggests that Australian business law should adopt the tort of unlawful, intentional interference with trade or business, and that an Australian court should also take the opportunity to subsume existing business law torts within this new tort, to simplify the law in this regard."