When English lawyer Richard Meeran uncovered mining company Cape PLC's internal documents in the 1990s, he found damning evidence of one of the biggest international corporate cover-ups in history.

His friend, lawyer David Kinley, tells the story in "In a Rain of Dust", a real-life legal thriller.

In this episode:

• How Meeran exposed the cover-up
• How Cape PLC was prepared to fight dirty to keep it all suppressed, including targeting Meeran.
• The surreal story of finding smoking-gun documents in an abandoned mining office

In a Rain of Dust: Death, Deceit, and the Lawyer Who Busted Big Asbestos by David Kinley

Guest: Professor David Kinley, Chair in Human Rights Law, University of Sydney Law School

Case In Point is produced by Miniature.

🎙️ MINIATURE is a premium podcast strategy & production studio serving expert-led brands & organisations.

Get your free step-by-step guide to how we made a university podcast that reached 200K+ listeners 👉https://www.miniaturecreative.com.au/podcast-guidebook

Every week, professional athletes break their bodies for our entertainment. So it will come as a huge shock to sports fans how poorly the law protects our sporting heroes.

In this episode:

• How our sporting codes lobbied to carve athletes out of injury protection in the 1970s
• How a Carlton player briefly cracked that system open in the 2000s before it slammed shut again, and
• Why the concussion crisis gripping the AFL and NRL is forcing a reckoning today.

If you're paid to play, and paid to get hurt, why aren't you protected when the damage is done?

Guest: Associate Professor Eric Windholz, Monash University Law School

Case: Whitehead v Carlton Football Club Ltd [2005] VSC 257

Further reading

• Why sports stars get less support than other injured workers – and how we can fix it by Eric Windholz
• Professional athletes and injury insurance: A better way forward by Eric Windholz

Case In Point is produced by Miniature.

🎙️ MINIATURE is a premium podcast strategy & production studio serving expert-led brands & organisations.

Get your free step-by-step guide to how we made a university podcast that reached 200K+ listeners 👉https://www.miniaturecreative.com.au/podcast-guidebook

Who is to blame when one of Elon or Jeff's suspiciously shaped rockets crashes to Earth from space?

What is pseudo-law, and where did all these goddam sovereign citizens come from?

Why was the government forced to release over 100 serious criminals into the community?

These cases and plenty more coming in this new (and 99.9% improved™) season of Case In Point.

Case In Point is produced by Miniature.

🎙️ MINIATURE is a premium podcast strategy & production studio serving expert-led brands & organisations.

Get your free step-by-step guide to how we made a university podcast that reached 200K+ listeners 👉https://www.miniaturecreative.com.au/podcast-guidebook

When the US Supreme Court ruled in favour of a company called Hobby Lobby in 2014, it was hailed by conservatives as a win for the religious freedom of business owners.

Critics of the decision said it dealt a major blow to the rights of employees to access reproductive healthcare.

But there's more to this case than meets the eye. 

Has the Hobby Lobby case rewritten the rules about what a corporation actually is?

Guest: Associate Professor Steve Kourabas, Deputy Director, Centre for Commercial Law and Regulatory Studies, Monash University

Case: Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., 573 U.S. 682 (2014)

Case In Point is produced by Miniature.

🎙️ MINIATURE is a premium podcast strategy & production studio serving expert-led brands & organisations.

Get your free step-by-step guide to how we made a university podcast that reached 200K+ listeners 👉https://www.miniaturecreative.com.au/podcast-guidebook

This case has been described as one of the most bizarre cases in recent Australian legal history, with a climax mirroring one of Agatha Christie’s most famous novels.

Today we ask: is it legally possible to murder a dead body?

Guest: Dr Natalia Antolak-Saper, criminal law scholar, Monash University

Case: R v Darrington [2016] VSC 60

Further Reading: Man jailed for eight years for attempting to murder a corpse (The Age, 29 February 2026)

Case In Point is produced by Miniature.

🎙️ MINIATURE is a premium podcast strategy & production studio serving expert-led brands & organisations.

Get your free step-by-step guide to how we made a university podcast that reached 200K+ listeners 👉https://www.miniaturecreative.com.au/podcast-guidebook

What happens when an athlete is punished for doping, but the athlete has no idea how the drugs entered their system?

In 2019 the Australian swimming world was rocked by news that champion swimmer Shayna Jack had returned a positive test for a banned performance enhancing drug.

The ensuing legal battle, including the penalties awarded against Jack, has exposed the challenges athletes face under current global anti-doping rules.

Guests:

• Paul Horvath, Principal at SportsLawyer. Lawyer for Shayna Jack
• Associate Professor Catherine Ordway, Sport Integrity Research Lead, University of Canberra

Case: 

• Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) v. Shayna Jack & Swimming Australia, CAS 2021/A/7579 & 7580, 16 September 2021

Further Reading:

• Tennis is facing an existential crisis over doping. How will it respond? by Catherine Ordway (The Conversation, January 2025)
• The US has exposed the World Anti-Doping Agency’s precarious funding model by Catherine Ordway (The Conversation, January 2025)
• Paul Horvath speaks on ABC Sport Podcast about the Jannik Sinner doping case (ABC Sport, February 2025)
• Doping to Win: The Risks for Feeder Clubs and Their Athletes by Alexandria Anthony (SportsLawyer blog, February 2025)
• Australia Anti-Doping Processes: Balancing a Level Playing Field Against Unintentional Offences by Paul Horvath (SportsLawyer, December 2024)
• Ethics in Sports: Mitigating Risk for Sports Organisations by Paul Horvath (SportsLawyer, October 2024)

Case In Point is produced by Miniature.

🎙️ MINIATURE is a premium podcast strategy & production studio serving expert-led brands & organisations.

Get your free step-by-step guide to how we made a university podcast that reached 200K+ listeners 👉https://www.miniaturecreative.com.au/podcast-guidebook

In the 1960s and 70s, Britain forcibly removed an entire population from the Chagos Archipelago in the Indian Ocean to make way for the Diego Garcia US military base—then spent decades denying it had happened, claiming the islands were uninhabited before British arrival.

This decades-long legal battle has pitted Mauritius against the United Kingdom across multiple international courts, challenging Britain's sovereignty claims and seeking justice for the exiled Chagossians.

In this episode:

• How small states use international courts as weapons against powerful nations
• The Cold War deal that turned paradise into a military base
• Why Britain's 2024 announcement to hand back the islands came with a controversial catch

Guest: Professor Douglas Guilfoyle, University of New South Wales

Check out Douglas's podcast Called to the Bar: International Law Over Drinks.

Litigation as legal statecraft: Small states and the law of the sea, by Douglas Guilfoyle (Centre for International Law Blog, National University of Singapore, 7 July 2023)

The Chagos Archipelago Before International Tribunals: Strategic Litigation and the Production Of Historical Knowledge, by Douglas Guilfoyle (Melbourne Journal of International Law)

Chagos islanders make historic trip home without British escort (BBC News, 16 February 2022)

The Last Colony: A Tale of Exile, Justice and Britain's Colonial Legacy by Philippe Sands & Martin Rowson

UK Foreign Secretary's statement on the Chagos Islands (7 October 2024)

Case In Point is produced by Miniature.

🎙️ MINIATURE is a premium podcast strategy & production studio serving expert-led brands & organisations.

Get your free step-by-step guide to how we made a university podcast that reached 200K+ listeners 👉https://www.miniaturecreative.com.au/podcast-guidebook

This is a story that most Australians have never heard.

The arrival of two men sparks a chain of events leading to a brutal execution witnessed by thousands in the heart of the frontier town of Melbourne.

Were these men criminals or resistance fighters?

Guest: Professor Lynette Russell AM, Sir John Monash Distinguished Professor and Australian Research Council Laureate Fellow, Monash University

Case: The trial and execution of Tunnerminnerwait and Maulboyheenner (Melbourne, 1842)

Further Reading:  Auty, K., & Russell, L. (2016). Hunt Them, Hang Them: 'The Tasmanians' in Port Phillip 1841-42. (1 ed.) Justice Press.

Case In Point is produced by Miniature.

🎙️ MINIATURE is a premium podcast strategy & production studio serving expert-led brands & organisations.

Get your free step-by-step guide to how we made a university podcast that reached 200K+ listeners 👉https://www.miniaturecreative.com.au/podcast-guidebook

A series of strange events kicking off in 1868 has massive implications for ownership of human body parts.

This curious court case has overthrown our legal understanding of who owns our bodies (living or dead), and could lead to a RoboCop style distopian nightmare.

Guest:  Dr Marc Trabsky, Associate Professor of Law, La Trobe University

Case: Doodeward v Spence [1908] HCA 45; (1908) 6 CLR 406 (31 July 1908)

www.lifedeathandlaw.com

One day, your body might be owned by an evil corporation because of what's inside this glass jar. (The Object in Question, February 2026)

Case In Point is produced by Miniature.

🎙️ MINIATURE is a premium podcast strategy & production studio serving expert-led brands & organisations.

Get your free step-by-step guide to how we made a university podcast that reached 200K+ listeners 👉https://www.miniaturecreative.com.au/podcast-guidebook

Would you take a friend to court to settle a dispute? Could this be awkward?

This is what Australia did with Japan, a key friend and ally, in 2014 over Japan's refusal to stop killing whales in the Southern Ocean.

Special guest Mark Dreyfus is Attorney-General of Australia.

Mark represented Australia in the culmination of a 40-year diplomatic stoush between Australia and Japan which went all the way to the International Court of Justice in The Hague.

Case: Whaling in the Antarctic (Australia v. Japan) (2014)

Guest: Mark Dreyfus KC MP, Attorney-General of Australia

Case In Point is produced by Miniature.

🎙️ MINIATURE is a premium podcast strategy & production studio serving expert-led brands & organisations.

Get your free step-by-step guide to how we made a university podcast that reached 200K+ listeners 👉https://www.miniaturecreative.com.au/podcast-guidebook