Why a deed of release didn't wipe a registered nurse's name from an internal misconduct register
A nurse thought a settlement deed had wiped her slate clean. The NSW Supreme Court has just said it didn't.
In Odiase v Secretary, NSW Ministry of Health [2026] NSWSC 538, decided on May 21, 2026, Griffiths AJ dismissed a judicial review challenge brought by registered nurse Itohan Odiase against the maintenance of her entry on the NSW Health Service Check Register. The register is an internal database used in recruitment and misconduct processes across NSW Health. It is governed by Policy Directive PD2021_017, which the court noted has no direct legislative basis.
The facts trace back to March 2021, when the South Western Sydney Local Health District raised eight allegations about Odiase's clinical practice at Liverpool Hospital. She was suspended from night shifts and moved to non-clinical duties. An investigation later substantiated five of those allegations. A show cause letter followed in October 2021.
On December 16, 2021, the district's then Chief Executive signed a letter setting out the decision to terminate Odiase's employment. The letter was never sent. That same day, the parties went into mediation in a separate discrimination matter Odiase had filed with NCAT. They signed a Mutual Deed of Release on January 12, 2022. Odiase agreed to resign. The district agreed to discontinue the investigation, halt the show cause process, and take no disciplinary action.
The deed said nothing about the Service Check Register.
In August 2024, NSW Health discovered the interim register entry had never been updated. It was converted to a final entry. Odiase asked for removal. The Ministry refused in a letter dated November 28, 2025, pointing to the substantiated misconduct findings and the position that, had she not resigned, she would have been terminated.
Odiase then filed for judicial review. Her central argument was that once the deed ended the disciplinary process, the "jurisdictional fact" sustaining the register entry fell away.
The court was not persuaded. Griffiths AJ found the jurisdictional-fact concept was drawn from review of statutory powers and did not extend to a policy-based regime like the register. The Policy Directive itself, at paragraph 3.3, says removal of a record "cannot form a part of any agreements or settlements in industrial disputes or the like." The deed was silent on the register and, in the court's view, register entries are not "disciplinary action" within the meaning of clause 4. The general release in clause 10 didn't extend to administrative records either, because the parties hadn't contemplated them when signing.
The judgment also noted an awkward procedural point. The directive requires interim records to be updated to final within 10 business days of the findings. In Odiase's case, it took about three years. An internal email from the district's Chief Executive flagged the need for "a process to ensure that this doesn't happen again please."
The amended summons was dismissed with costs.
For HR professionals, the lessons run beyond NSW Health. Settlement deeds do not, by default, clear internal misconduct registers operating under a separate policy framework. If a settlement is meant to deal with internal records, the deed has to say so expressly - and even then, the underlying policy may not allow it. Post-resignation findings can still be made and can still feed into registers, because under NSW Health policy the misconduct process must be completed even where the staff member has resigned. And while delays in updating internal records didn't sink the employer here, the court noticed - which is worth remembering for any HR function that runs its own internal flagging system.
