Dyson Hore-Lacy
Australian lawyer

Dyson Hore-Lacy SC is an Australian barrister, human rights advocate, author and former Fitzroy Football Club president.
Legal career
Dyson was admitted to practice in Victoria, New South Wales, Tasmania, Queensland, Western Australia and Northern Territory and was admitted to Victorian Bar in 1967. He has had a distinguished career practising in criminal and commercial law, and was made QC in 1995.
An advocate of human rights, Dyson has practiced extensively in cases involving human rights abuses in Australia, including for Aboriginals in the Northern Territory and Western Australia. He worked as senior counsel in a high-profile complaint to United Nations Human Rights Committee. Dyson's expertise are in insurance, discrimination, contracts and cases of medical negligence.
Libel incident
In his book, Getting Away with Murder, author Phil Cleary alleged that Mr Hore-Lacy helped a man who killed his own wife to manufacture a provocation defence. This defamatory allegation was proven to be false, and a jury chose to award Hore-Lacy $30,000 in exemplary damages to punish Cleary and his publisher, in addition to $600,000 in compensatory and aggravated damages.
Chairman of the Fitzroy Football Club
Dyson Hore-Lacy succeeded Leon Wiegard as Chairman of the Fitzroy board after the Gary Pert contractual dispute in 1991. During his tenure, the Fitzroy Football Club faced an existential crisis as the Australian Football League sought to force a merger of the club.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Dyson Hore-Lacy” as australian lawyer. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as australian lawyer. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 11, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5319498. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1967, 1995 and 1991.
Public reputation and documentary evidence do not always develop together; absence from a summary is not evidence of historical absence. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.
- Establishing names and roles
- Building a first chronology
- Locating cited institutions
Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Dyson Hore-Lacy”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Dyson Hore-Lacy primary sources, Dyson Hore-Lacy archive and Dyson research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Dyson Hore-Lacy”?
- Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
- How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Dyson Hore-Lacy” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.