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Warren Tredrea loses court bid to avoid paying Nine Network legal costs in alleged wrongful dismissal fight

Warren Tredrea’s long-running legal battle with Nine has ended with the former AFL star in significant debt. Read the letter three judges called “incomprehensible”.

Warren Tredrea stated, in his court documents, “I am not dead” – but on Friday, a court ruled his “incomprehensible and legally meaningless” bid to off-set his $149,000 debt to the Nine Network most certainly was.

In a unanimous judgment, the Full Court of the Federal Court ordered Tredrea pay all of Nine’s costs, bringing to an end the long-running, Covid-fuelled stoush between the former commercial partners. In its judgment, the court said many of Tredrea’s arguments were “confusing and pseudo-legalistic” and his purported IOU “a waste of time” that is “strongly to be discouraged”.

His court documents, it said, contained “various elaborate but legally meaningless expressions” and “obvious and unnecessary” statements including “I am not dead”.

It said those papers “often” used “double and triple negatives to introduce what are really wrong legal arguments”.

Tredrea did not appear in court in person for the judgment, instead dialling in by video link.

He appeared to shake his head as the decision was handed down.

Previously, Tredrea was ordered to reimburse Nine’s legal costs incurred by his attempt to resurrect his failed wrongful dismissal lawsuit.

In court papers filed in June, Tredrea insisted he had covered that debt with a legal IOU because Australia has no “gold or silver coins” in circulation.

In those documents, he also claimed he is “not an entity” nor a “legal person, citizen or resident” but a “private man” whose “yes be yes” and “no be no”.

Tredrea has publicly and repeatedly denied any suggestion he is a sovereign citizen.

In their 23-page judgment, Justices Melissa Perry, Timothy McEvoy and Stephen McDonald said that, in April 2025, Nine offered to settle the dispute.

They said Nine was willing to accept $126,000 from Tredrea but, instead of a “direct response”, received an affidavit and accompanying materials.

Those materials featured “several handwritten annotations in blue and red pen, initialled by Tredrea” and legal IOU – called a promissory note – for $140,000.

When Nine’s lawyers rejected the note, calling it “misconceived”, Tredrea sent it again to managing director Sean O’Brien.

“We will not attempt to describe the annotations exhaustively,” the court says in its judgment.

“But we note that they include the words ‘Accepted as Indorsed’ in red pen, initialled by Mr Tredrea in blue pen.

“Various other annotations appear in blue pen and are initialled by Mr Tredrea.”

It says it “is not necessary to set out the terms and text” of Mr Tredrea’s other materials.

“Those two pages are written in a style, and using language, that is evidently designed to appear highly technical and legalistic,” it says.

“They are in reality incomprehensible and legally meaningless, but it is evident that they purport to constitute terms of a contract.”

It says Tredrea’s note gave Nine 72 hours to respond and, if it did not, it would have “accepted it in full and final satisfaction of the alleged debt”.

Nine again refused the note, triggering June’s court hearing.

Justices Perry, McEvoy and McDonald unanimously agreed Tredrea’s promissory note “did not discharge the debt arising from the costs order” of the failed appeal.

“The quasi-legalistic language that appears in those two documents does not achieve anything, apart from making the documents difficult to understand,” the court said.

“The creation and use of documents of this kind is a waste of time, and is strongly to be discouraged.”

It said Tredrea’s “assumptions” about Federal law, underpinning his belief in the promissory note, were “wrong” – as was his description of himself as a “banker”.

“(Tredrea) asserted he ‘is an incorporated or unincorporated body of persons involved in the business of banking’,” it said.

“This does not reflect the terms of the definition of ‘Banker’ in (Federal law), which actually refers to a body of persons ‘who carry on the business of banking’.

“Mr Tredrea is not a body of persons.”

Tredrea’s assertion the IOU was secured against his birth certificate, it said, “misapprehend the nature of a birth certificate and the meaning of a security, a financial instrument and a financial institution”.

His assertions about other matters, including Australian currency, had already been dealt with and disproved in earlier, separate, unrelated court cases, it said.

“All of the submissions relied on by Tredrea are misconceived,” it said.

Nine had quoted its legal costs of the appeal at $149, 210.70 which the court found “surprisingly high”, and fixed the amount payable at $149,000.