The lawyer's drunken remarks and inappropriate touching of women colleagues happened during taxi rides home from work functions. Photo / 123rf
WARNING: This story details sexual harassment and may be distressing.
A senior lawyer who offered a colleague the “best orgasm of your life” in a taxi ride home from a work event has been suspended for 20 months.
The former partner has retained interim name suppression after appearing before the Lawyers and Conveyancers Disciplinary Tribunal earlier this year where he admitted charges of misconduct relating to three drunken nights involving two female colleagues.
At that hearing the tribunal found him guilty of misconduct but today issued its decision to suspend the man they’ve anonymised as “Mr Q” as well as censure him and order him to pay one of his victims $10,000 as well as $40,000 in legal costs to the Law Society.
“He made the advance when they were alone [apart from the taxi driver],” the tribunal said in its decision released last night.
“His victim was trapped in an enclosed space. It was opportunistic. No contextual basis supports any thought his actions might be welcome.
“It was an awful breach of the trust Victim A was entitled to have in her employer.”
The first incident occurred after a work function in 2018 when the pair were the only two left in a taxi at the end of the night.
The lawyer tried to put his hands between the woman’s thighs and she described him as being “irritatingly persistent”.
Eighteen months later at the firm’s Christmas function in 2019 the partner was alone in a taxi with the same female colleague when he put his arm around her shoulders and then slid his hand down to touch her buttocks.
“F*** off and stop touching me,” she told him before requesting the taxi driver drop her off first so she didn’t have to be alone with him.
The third incident involved a female legal executive at the firm where they both worked.
Again in a taxi on the way home from a work function the lawyer proceeded to slide his foot onto the victim’s legs and knees. The woman had to constantly adjust herself to avoid him.
As soon as they were alone in the taxi the lawyer got down on his knees and tried to prise the woman’s legs apart and said: “I am going to give you the best orgasm of your life”.
The woman told him there was absolutely no way she would allow him to do that so he got off the floor and sat “extremely close”, putting his arm around her shoulders.
He proceeded to tell the woman that she needed to have more sex and made comments about the importance of having enough sex.
“Promise me that you will have lots of sex these holidays,” he said to her before talking about “giving the taxi driver a show” and motioned touching the woman’s breasts.
He then attempted to kiss her goodnight as he left the taxi.
The tribunal said in regard to the first victim his attempt to touch her under the guise of light-heartedness made his offending more severe.
“This conduct suggests a pattern of disrespect for sexual boundaries of employees,” the decision stated.
The tribunal based its decision in part on the penalty imposed on another lawyer, Dean Palmer.
Palmer took two female summer interns on a drunken lunchtime trip to a sex shop and inappropriately emailed another.
The tribunal also relied heavily on Russell McVeagh’s James Gardner-Hopkins as a test case by which to measure the severity of Mr Q’s actions. Gardner-Hopkins was found guilty of offences against five interns at his firm.
“Mr Q’s conduct was offensive, invasive, and demeaning. In the case of Victim A, Mr Q repeated his behaviour despite her objections on the first occasion.
“In the case of Victim B, his assault on her has had a profound impact.”
The tribunal also noted that while Mr Q’s victims were not materially younger than him or new at the firm a power imbalance still existed between them as he was a senior partner.
“They relied on their employment. If they quit on bad terms, their ability to find work in the same area in their locality might have been compromised.”
Mr Q’s interim name suppression will expire in four weeks at which time he is able to appeal the order.
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