The lawyer, who had regularly appeared before the judge for around 20 years, was delayed by road works, arriving four minutes late.
He found the presiding judge had dismissed the application and he asked for it to be recalled, but was declined.
He then had the registrar write a note, "demanding a hearing today and he is also going to make a complaint to the Judicial Conduct Commission", the body which receives and assesses complaints about judges.
Arrangements were instead made to have the application heard by another judge that afternoon, which was also declined.
The judge then filed a professional conduct complaint against the lawyer about the "grossly discourteous message passed to him and was presented as an inappropriate attempt to threaten a judge in order to secure a particular outcome".
The judge believed the lawyer's actions had potential to diminish his reputation in the eyes of court staff who he said had "bent over backwards" to help him.
The lawyer responded to the standards committee complaint that he was submitting a complaint about both judges.
He also said there was poor cell phone coverage on the route he travelled, but it wasn't his practice to use his phone while driving.
He considered the judge's actions in dismissing his application to be "totally unacceptable in the circumstances".
When his application was heard that afternoon by Judge B he felt it was "extremely clear that he had talked to Judge A and there was no prospect of it being granted and there were inappropriate comments made by Judge B" indicating "there was something else going on" at the hearing.
In the recent decision, Maidment noted it was "regrettable" the matter couldn't be resolved elsewhere, "but this is where it is".
Two key elements of a breach by the lawyer were "demanding" a hearing and also using a threat of lodging the complaint.
Maidment said he couldn't be certain that the request was couched in the form of a "demand", instead regarding it as a "robust approach in his attempts to secure a hearing".
The lawyer implied that either the judge should have waited longer before taking steps to dismiss his application, or that the judge should have reinstated the application immediately on request.
"[The lawyer's] concern that his application had been dismissed was understandable."
However, he said it wasn't open to him or the standards committee to decide whether the judge was "quick off the mark" and the decision was open to the judge to make.
Court staff did everything they could to advise and find the lawyer that morning, with the registrar calling him several times and even walking outside to see if he was coming.
The lawyer had a duty to do what he could to get the hearing reinstated, and "could not be criticised for that".
However, the crux of the judge's complaint was the request for the rehearing included the lawyer making a complaint and "overstepping the mark", and that this was the lawyer trying to "get his own way".
Maidment said he was surprised there was "such a marked degree of disagreement" between an experienced judge and lawyer as to what constituted appropriate conduct.
He found it was "compellingly clear" the lawyer's intention to lodge a complaint was due to him believing the judge improperly dismissed the hearing and then refused to reinstate it.
"It is difficult to see how a judge's decision to dismiss an application in circumstances where counsel for the applicant had failed to appear, could provide a reasonable and contestable basis for a lawyer to advance a complaint to the JCC."
The same could be said of the judge's refusal to immediately reinstate the application, he said.
"Decisions of this nature are part and parcel of a judge's daily work," before adding he didn't consider such a decision would provide foundation for a complaint to the JCC.
"In my view, the message [lawyer] asked to be conveyed to the judge was ... unprofessional and discourteous," and breached three parts of the Lawyers Conduct and Client Care Rules.
The area standards committee earlier found the lawyer's intent to file a complaint about the judge "constituted a threat for an improper purpose".
"I cannot disagree with that finding, although my sense of the matter is that [lawyer's] actions were more reflective of a somewhat impulsive and belligerent response to what he genuinely perceived to be an unreasonable approach adopted by Judge A, rather than a conscious attempt to 'threaten' the judge."
When questioned about the reasonableness of being four minutes late, a spokesperson for the New Zealand Law Society Te Kāhui Ture o Aotearoa said it doesn't comment on individual decisions.
"However, practising lawyers in New Zealand have duties to the court and to their clients ... as well as obligations under the High Court Rules 2016. Breaching those duties is serious because they go to the heart of the proper functioning of our justice system and the rule of law."
