KEY POINTS:
A lawyer suing Westpac for over $5 million dollars has dropped his claims against the trading bank.
Instead, Clive Bradbury and his law partner Garry Muir face paying Westpac substantial costs.
In the High Court at Auckland yesterday, on the last day of the hearing, Bradbury and his firm Bradbury & Muir abandoned their claims after Justice Rhys Harrison said he was concerned their case didn't stack up.
Bradbury & Muir had claimed Westpac ruined its business when it dumped the firm as legal counsel in 2005 in the wake of the Trinity tax avoidance scheme. It had also claimed it was defamed by a paper to the Westpac board which mistakenly referred to Trinity as tax "evasion".
Bradbury and Muir were the architects of the $3 billion forestry investment scheme, which both the High and Appeal Courts have ruled was tax avoidance. Bradbury, Muir and others are now appealing to the Supreme Court over Trinity. After their connection with the scheme was made public in November 2004 Westpac suspended its relationship with the firm, and ended it three months later after the High Court ruling on Trinity.
Westpac told the court this week that Bradbury "was entirely the author of his own misfortune" by refusing to communicate responsibly and professionally with the Westpac legal services team.
But Bradbury and his firm claimed it was hypocritical of Westpac to dump them over a tax avoidance scheme, when Westpac is in an ongoing tax avoidance dispute with Inland Revenue which the bank has estimated may cost it as much as $815 million if it loses.
Justice Harrison gave Westpac leave to apply for costs. He noted that Bradbury & Muir's claim raised serious allegations against Westpac, including "imputations of misconduct by its senior management".
"I am satisfied that all the allegations were without any arguable legal or factual basis."
Bank executives, including then CEO Ann Sherry, had acted "properly, fairly and lawfully", he said.
