A technical glitch has been blamed for a legal document between the FPA and Bannister Mansfield Financial Services (Bannister Mansfield) being made public.
News of the glitch was revealed yesterday in the NSW district registry of the Federal Court of Australia.
Late last week the FPA was accused of leaking an affidavit to its 12,000 members as well as publishing it on the association's website, as an alleged retaliation attempt towards Bannister Mansfield over newspaper advertisements it published in early February.
Legal representatives for Bannister Mansfield suggested the FPA had released the affidavit with the intent of sullying their client's name, despite the document not having been officially tendered to court in its entirety.
However, according to an affidavit from Robert Charles Geoffrey Suttie filed 6 February 2009, public access to the alleged leaked document on the FPA's website was a technical error.
Anyone who searched for Bannister Mansfield or Gavin Murphy would have found the document, the association's legal representative said.
Suggestion the affidavit was published to the benefit of the FPA was denied by the association's representatives.
The court is yet to reach a verdict on the matter, with the case to resume on 23 March for directions.
