Rugby star Kurtley Beale has had a setback in court, losing his bid for costs after being found not guilty of sexual intercourse without consent and sexual touching.
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Beale, 35, was acquitted by a NSW District Court jury in February of forcing a woman, who cannot be named, to perform oral sex on him in a toilet cubicle at Bondi's Beach Road Hotel in December 2022.
His legal team had argued he should be awarded costs because woman's account was contradicted by CCTV footage of the night, and so the prosecution should never have been pursued.
Judge Graham Turnbull declined to rule in Beale's favour, saying "questions of substance" still needed to be determined in the case.
"It was not simply a word on word case," Judge Turnbull said on Friday.
In knocking back Beale's application, he took into account evidence at trial of phone calls between Beale and the complainant that were "heavily relied" on by the prosecution.
The Crown, on a previous occasion, argued comments Beale made in a recorded phone call with the woman were enough to warrant pursuing the case.
By contast, Beale's legal team argued the calls, including one "pretext" call set up by the complainant and police, demonstrated the applicant's "repeated and sustained" denial of criminality.
In Friday's judgment, Judge Turnbull also considered whether the complainant substantially lacked credit and was "deliberately dishonest" with police and in court.
This included, he said, assessing whether the complainant concocted an account in order to "shore up" a fragile relationship with her fiance and give it "some degree" of stability.
On the issue of CCTV evidence, the judge said there were "palpable deficiencies", pointing to the footage not showing a queue to the women's toilet as asserted by the complainant.
"This contradicts the complainant's reason for going into the men's toilet," Judge Turnbull said.
Australian Associated Press
