Retired Senior Counsel, Sydney

Des Kennedy SC holds a BA (Newc) and an LLM (Syd) and was admitted to the NSW bar in 1975 and appointed a Senior Counsel in 1999. He developed an extensive common law practice involving complex litigation including intentional harm, police abuse and malicious prosecution as well as in sexual and racial discrimination, harassment and bullying. He has published extensively in these areas and presented papers at major state and national legal conferences. He has presented on Benchmark TV on some of these topics.

He was Senior Counsel for Mr Naidu in Nationwide News v Naidu, which resurrected the tort of intentional harm and for the plaintiff in Oyston v St Patricks College, a major school bullying case.

He became a nationally accredited mediator in 1986. He retired in 2017 and became a member of the advisory committee of the Racial Justice Centre in early 2022.