Challis, DHR’s former Australian head, now runs his own search firm and is alleged to be behind an anonymous blog detailing DHR practices and accusing it of dishonesty, lying and lacking ethics.

The firm is suing for injurious falsehood as well as misleading or deceptive conduct in contravention of consumer law regulations.

However, DHR has already lost round one of the lawsuit. Justice Richard White of the New South Wales Supreme Court declined to grant DHR’s request for the blog to be shut down pending a full hearing. Justice White said while the statements on the blog should not be accepted as true, DHR had not provided sufficient evidence to prove they were false.

In a judgement delivered last week, Justice White said there was no direct evidence Challis was the author of messages posted to the blog. However, “there is a strong prima facie case [there is enough evidence for there to be a case to answer] that he has published the messages”.

Recruiter contacted both DHR and Challis but had not heard back by deadline.