Unsatisfactory conduct: Censure for lawyer after confrontation outside courtroom
This is a summary of a decision by a Lawyers Standards Committee under the Lawyers and Conveyancers Act 2006. This summary was published in LawTalk 786, 2 December 2011.
A lawyer was censured by a Lawyers Standards Committee after he engaged in an abusive exchange with a member of the public directly outside a courtroom and then pursued the confrontation through the District Court building.
The lawyer (A) was acting for the defendant in a domestic assault case, while the other person was a supporter of the alleged victim.
The court manager complained to the Law Society that A had sworn at and verbally abused the support person outside the courtroom during an adjournment for lunch, and that A had then inflamed the situation by continuing to confront the other person. The manager also claimed that A had misled the judge about the incident when the court resumed.
The committee considered written accounts from a court victim adviser and a security officer who were present during the incident. There was also closed circuit TV footage of the incident.
An initial confrontation had taken place immediately outside the courtroom when A and the support person first encountered each other during the adjournment. Words were exchanged and the pair was separated. The CCTV footage had no audio, but the accounts given by A and the victim adviser as to what was said were broadly the same. According to A, the support person had said “Why does he [A] talk about me like I’m a piece of s***?” to which A replied “because you are a piece of s***”.
After the two were separated, a security officer escorted the domestic assault complainant and her supporter into the court lobby and down the stairs to the ground floor. The CCTV showed A following the group into the lobby and then continuing to confront the supporter.
When the court resumed after lunch, A complained to the judge about the incident, claiming the other person had threatened him. The court manager’s complaint alleged that no such threat had been made.
The Standards Committee said there was insufficient evidence for it to be satisfied either way on this point and therefore it could not determine to the necessary standard that A had misled the judge as the manager had claimed. Because this was a serious allegation, the committee said, it had approached its analysis of the evidence with caution.
However, the committee said it was plain that A had acted gratuitously and unprofessionally in the confrontation, and that he had “lacked decorum and dignity”. The committee thought it was highly probable the support person had been abusive, but as an officer of the court, A was expected to act professionally and not to sink to the level of mutual abuse.
In addition, there had been absolutely no need for him to have followed the other person out into the lobby to continue the exchange.
The committee said it had no hesitation in finding A guilty of unsatisfactory conduct, as his behaviour amounted both to conduct unbecoming, under s12(b)(i), and to unprofessional conduct, under s12(b)(ii) of the Lawyers and Conveyancers Act 2006.
As well as censuring A, the committee ordered him to pay $500 costs to the Law Society.