Otira Stagecoach Hotel employee assaulted by owner after duckling dispute turns fowl

Lester Rowntree was ordered by the Employment Relations Authority to pay a former employee $42,000 after smashing his face into a freezer door. Photo / ODT

A dispute over the care of some abandoned ducklings turned fowl when a hotel publican assaulted one of his employees before telling police and a court that the other man had simply fallen over while drunk.

However, neither police, nor a jury, nor a a judge believed prominent West Coast publican Lester Rowntree’s version of events and now the Employment Relations Authority has joined the list of those who have sided with his employee about how he sustained his injuries.

According to the authority’s summary of the incident John Wright was working at the Otira Stagecoach Hotel - 15km north of Arthur’s Pass and owned by Rowntree - one night in November 2018 as a cook and duty manager.

Rowntree went away for four days and had asked Wright to look after some ducklings he’d rescued from the side of the road after their mother had been hit by a car. He’d been keeping them in an old, broken freezer in the back room with a light for warmth and some water.

However, when he arrived back at the hotel he found the light had been switched off, the freezer hadn’t been cleaned and some of the ducklings had died. Rowntree was reportedly furious at Wright and began swearing at him, to which his employee replied that he’d been hired as a cook not to look after ducks.

What happened next was heavily disputed but Wright says his boss told him to take a look at the ducklings, and while he was bent over the freezer Rowntree grabbed him by the back of the head and bashed his face into the perspex sliding door, before throwing him to the floor and kicking him.

Wright said he felt “bamboozled” and managed to stumble out of the room and upstairs, where he told another staff member what had happened.

By contrast, Rowntree says Wright was drunk and after the heated exchange he tripped on a piece of plywood and when his boss tried to help him up struggled away and fell into the doorframe, where he sustained his facial injuries.

Police and an ambulance were called and Wright was taken to hospital where he spent eight days in care.

Wright’s brother Wayne spoke on his behalf and told NZME today that his brother had suffered a broken pelvis when Rowntree kicked him.

“It’s bloody hard to break a pelvis ...” he said. “You certainly don’t get one from falling into a door frame.”

Wayne Wright said that after the incident he collected his brother from the West Coast and helped him move, before lodging a complaint with the police.

A jury subsequently found Rowntree guilty of assault with intent to injure in January 2020. He successfully appealed that ruling and was found guilty instead of common assault at a judge-alone trial in June 2022, though he was discharged without conviction.

Authority member Peter van Keulen said he was inclined to side with Wright’s version of events which had remained consistent through multiple statements to police and during evidence in court. Police attending the scene did not assess Wright as being intoxicated, nor did the hospital where he was taken for treatment, and evidence presented at trial showed his wounds as being inconsistent with impact from a doorframe.

Rowntree on the other hand told police that Wright had slipped on a wet floor before telling the authority he’d tripped on plywood.

“For Mr Rowntree’s version of events to be correct Mr Wright must have either fabricated the assault knowing he tripped twice or he must have not known he tripped twice and assumed he had been assaulted,” van Keulen said in his ruling released this week.

Following the assault Wright didn’t return to work at the hotel and filed a complaint with the authority over how he was treated.

Van Keulen said the assault was a “serious breach of duty” and that Wright not returning to work because of it was foreseeable and understandable. He also said it effectively constituted an unjustified dismissible because he would be unlikely to simply show back up to work as normal after being assaulted by his employer.

The authority awarded Wright $34,000 in compensation for the incident and $8000 in lost wages.

“Mr Wright’s evidence is that he was continually fearful of Mr Rowntree after the assault and this caused him to behave differently even in his own home, he was humiliated by what occurred and this (was) particularly problematic given the small community he lived in; all of this became so concerning for Mr Wright he ended shifting away,” van Keulen’s decision read.

“Significantly Mr Wright continued to suffer from the trauma he experienced and has had counselling to deal with this. And there was further humiliation and embarrassment over needing ongoing assistance as a result of the injuries he suffered.”

Rowntree, a prominent publican on the West Coast, told NZME that he maintained his innocence and planned to appeal the authority’s ruling.

“It’s all bullsh*t,” he said.

“This whole thing has been incredibly debilitating for me.”

Rowntree says he never would have harmed Wright and had been trying to help him after he’d fallen over.

“If I did what they said I’d done to Mr Wright I should be in jail for a very long time.”

Jeremy Wilkinson is an Open Justice reporter based in Manawatū covering courts and justice issues with an interest in tribunals. He has been a journalist for nearly a decade and has worked for NZME since 2022.