Magistrate finds ‘CVN’T’ sandwich-board worn by prominent activist was ‘cheeky but not offensive’

Sydney sandwich-board wearer Danny Lim’s signs displaying “CVN’T” may be cheeky but they are not criminally offensive, a Sydney magistrate has ruled.

Lim, aged in his mid-70s, challenged a $500 fine for offensive behaviour after he was arrested in January in Barangaroo while wearing a sign saying “SMILE CVN’T! WHY CVN’T?”

Police handcuffed the pensioner in front of a shocked crowd in Barangaroo after a single phone complaint. The court heard the arrest was sparked after someone called police to say she was offended “as a woman”.

But magistrate Jacqueline Milledge, who was highly critical of the arresting officers’ behaviour, said the law was concerned with what would offend the “hypothetical reasonable person”.

“It’s not someone who is thin-skinned, who is easily offended,” she said in Downing Centre local court on Friday.

“It’s someone who can ride out some of the crudities of life. [The sign is] provocative and cheeky but it is not offensive.”

Milledge said she did not like some signs and ads that played on the c-word or f-word.

SBS News (@SBSNews) Local icon Danny Lim - best known for calling Tony Abbott the c-word - was recorded calling out for help as police took one of his well-known signs away from him in Sydney today. pic.twitter.com/R90HRejjmr

But she said the “overwhelming opinion” of people in the public square at the time of Lim’s arrest said he meant no harm and was not harmful or offensive.

She said the sign could easily be read as to-and-fro conversation: “Smile! Can’t. Why? Can’t.”

With his dog Smarty on his lap, Lim earlier told the court the sign was intended to make people smile and think.

“When you go to Barangaroo on Monday, Tuesday or Saturday they don’t smile,” he said. “We need Australia to smile again.”

He said his various “CVN’T” signs had become his trademark after he was given a fine – later overturned – for a similar board targeting Tony Abbott in 2015.

That sign used an inverted A in the word “can’t” and said “TONY YOU CAN’T. LIAR, HEARTLESS, CRUEL” and “TONY YOU CAN’T SCREW EDUCATION.”

The court was shown photographs of Lim, wearing various signs, beside Malcolm Turnbull, Bill Shorten, Labor senator Kristina Keneally and conservative senator Cory Bernardi.

Under cross-examination, he said he was aware some people found his signs offensive.

“Everyone thinks differently; it’s only a few of them compared to thousands of them [not taking offence],” he said.

But he disagreed that in a roundabout way he was using the c-word. Lim said he had the “highest respect” for that word.

The police prosecutor, Rick Mansley, who also had Smarty on his lap during some of the hearing, argued that unlike the f-word, the c-word could not be used as an adjective or verb and had only one use: to be offensive.

“How can the court say the standards of society have sunk so low?” he said.

When Lim was confronted by police in January more than a dozen people – some filming on their phones – surrounded the officers and told them the sign was not offensive.

A police body camera tendered to the court recorded the acting sergeant labelling the bystanders “f***ing pathetic ... social justice warriors”.

Milledge, a former police prosecutor, said she understood policing was not an exact science but admonished snr const Ashley Hans for describing “a gathering of ordinary citizens” thus.

She said while Lim had told police they would have to arrest him, he was compliant.

However, the handcuffs they used caused bruising as well as bleeding to one of his wrists and his sign was ripped off. It was “unnecessary and very heavy-handed”, she said.

Lim’s pro-bono lawyer, Bryan Wrench, says they may sue police over the arrest but for now will savour Friday’s victory.

More than 150 people surrounded a Sydney police station to protest against the treatment of Lim after footage of him being arrested sent social media into a frenzy in January.