Orman was found guilty of the 2002 murder of underworld figure Victor Peirce and sentenced to 20 years’ imprisonment in 2009.
Mick Gatto and Nicola Gobbo at a funeral in 2008.Credit: Angela Wylie
It later emerged in a 2019 appeal against that conviction, and during the Royal Commission into the Management of Police Informants, that Gobbo and Victoria Police had corrupted Orman’s right to a fair trial.
Gobbo had been working as both his lawyer and a registered police informer, providing information about his case and working to turn witnesses against him.
“[Gobbo’s] conduct was a fundamental breach of her duties to Mr Orman and to the court … There was, accordingly, a substantial miscarriage of justice,” the Court of Appeal found.
Since his release from prison in 2019, Orman has emerged as an influential player in the Victorian construction industry through his connections to the CFMEU and Gatto.
Among the items the court had recently allowed Gobbo to search through were “all letters, emails, text messages, or messages exchanged on any other messaging services between [Orman] and any official or employee of the CFMEU” over a four-year period.
“Orman submitted that the damage to his reputation occurred when he was prosecuted, convicted and imprisoned for murder and that anything that occurred over a decade later, after his conviction had been overturned and he was freed from prison, was irrelevant to the issue of reputation raised by the proceeding. I reject Orman’s submission,” Justice Andrew Keogh ruled in March.
“Gobbo wishes to show that Orman’s reputation has been damaged by his business dealings and interactions with CFMEU officials, and to have the use of the discovered documents for that purpose.”
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In November 2024, Orman settled his lawsuit against Victoria Police for an undisclosed sum after the state government passed a law retroactively capping potential police compensation payouts for the Lawyer X scandal at $1 million.
A source familiar with the litigation but not authorised to speak publicly said Orman had been seeking about $8 million before the law was passed.
Orman’s lawyer, Jeremy King, and Gobbo’s barrister, Tim Tobin, both declined to comment.
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