What an indemnity costs order says about Campbell’s Federal Court failures
An indemnity costs order is one of the sharpest sanctions available in Australian civil litigation. In plain terms, it means the losing party may be required to pay a much larger share of the other side’s legal costs than is usual, because the court has concluded the conduct in question was sufficiently serious to justify a punitive response.
That is what happened in Campbell v McIntyre (No 2) [2026] FCA 1279, where Justice Derrington found Adrian Campbell’s non-disclosures in a Federal Court affidavit to be “exceptionally serious”. The court discharged injunctions Campbell had obtained and ordered him to pay 80 per cent of the other side’s costs on an indemnity basis — a result that sits at the harsher end of Australian costs law.
Why indemnity costs matter
Ordinarily, courts in Australia apply what is known as party-and-party costs, where only a reasonable proportion of legal expenses is recoverable. Indemnity costs go further. They are generally reserved for cases involving misconduct, deliberate deception, unreasonable conduct, or circumstances where the court considers the conduct has wasted time and resources so significantly that an elevated costs order is warranted.
For consumers and investors, the significance lies not in legal technicality alone, but in what such an order can reveal about credibility. When a court imposes indemnity costs after finding serious non-disclosure, it is often because the integrity of the evidence has been undermined. In Campbell’s case, the affidavit sworn to obtain urgent interim orders was later corrected after the court had already been misled about his Australian criminal history.
“Exceptionally serious” was how Justice Derrington described the omissions in the Federal Court proceedings.
The background matters. Campbell had earlier sworn that he had never been convicted of any criminal offence in Australia. Public records show otherwise. His convictions included fraud matters in 2012, five Southport Magistrates Court convictions in 2015 concerning International Solar Solutions, and 2018 offences under Australian Consumer Law arising from Eco Boss Pty Ltd, where he pleaded guilty to 11 counts of false and misleading conduct and was fined personally.
The court later accepted a corrected affidavit. But the damage had already been done. The injunctions were discharged, and the indemnity costs order reflected the court’s view that the omissions were not minor errors but serious failures in disclosure to a superior court.
The consumer warning behind the costs order
Legal observers often treat indemnity costs as a procedural issue. Yet for the public, they can also be a warning sign. Civil proceedings involving offshore operators, property marketing, and investor funds often turn on trust, documentation, and the reliability of the person making representations. Where a court finds that a party has not been candid about their own history, questions naturally arise about the wider business conduct surrounding the dispute.
That concern has been amplified by Campbell’s associated ventures, including Kinnara Capital, Kinnara Asia and Kinnara Limited, which have marketed South-East Asian property to Australian investors from Thailand and Hong Kong. Separate public reporting has linked those entities to the stalled Bali-linked development covered by the Daily Mail reported scrutiny in October 2026. Those allegations remain untested in court.
Campbell has said his convictions are a matter of public record, that his first affidavit was incomplete but not intentionally misleading, and that he regrets the error. He has also said Kinnara acted only as sales and marketing agent for the Marina Bay City project, did not hold purchaser funds, and reported the matter to Indonesian police in November 2025.
For consumers, the broader lesson is clear. An indemnity costs order does not determine every underlying allegation, but it does show that a court has found conduct serious enough to depart from the ordinary rule on costs. In cross-border investment disputes, that can be an important signal about reliability, disclosure, and the risks that follow when litigation starts to expose the record behind the marketing.