THE treatment of sidelined Royal Hobart Hospital CEO Michael Pervan was reminiscent of a Franz Kafka novel, a court heard yesterday.
Mr Pervan is suing the Health Department seeking to overturn what he says were flawed investigations into bullying allegations made against him by two doctors.
The Supreme Court was told yesterday that Mr Pervan was suddenly removed from his $200,000-a-year position by Department of Health and Human Services secretary David Roberts in September 2009 after just a year in the job.
Mr Pervan’s barrister, Duncan Kerr, SC, told Justice David Porter that Mr Pervan was unaware of the allegations made against him until he was stood down.
Mr Kerr told the court the main complainant against Mr Pervan knew the CEO was being stood down before Mr Pervan did himself.
“It was rather like The Trial, [Franz] Kafka’s novel, with its many twists and turns … he began to suffer in his circumstances and the facts became widely and publicly known,” he said.
Mr Kerr said Mr Pervan was denied natural justice by not being given the opportunity to reply to the allegations against him and state public service procedures were not adhered to in the investigations.
He said the appointment of an investigator was bungled, that the investigation was biased and that the investigator exceeded her authority and embarked on “a frolic of her own”.
Mr Kerr said Mr Pervan had been treated shabbily by his employer.
“He was excluded from entering the site of the Royal Hobart Hospital without Mr Roberts’ consent … and he was prohibited from entering his ninth-floor office under any circumstances without his consent and without an escort appointed by Mr Roberts.
