Wintec academic’s privacy not breached when car parking fines were disclosed to employer

Former Wintec tutor Paul Judge sued Care Park NZ for disclosing his parking fines to his ex-employer and lost. Photo / Natalie Akoorie

A car parking company that gave details of a man’s outstanding parking fines to his employer, ultimately ending in his resignation, did not breach his privacy.

Former Waikato Institute of Technology (Wintec) film tutor Paul Judge sued Care Park NZ, the company that managed Wintec’s car park, for $142,500 in the Human Rights Review Tribunal after the company disclosed to the polytechnic details of his 20-plus parking tickets totalling $2180.

But the tribunal dismissed the claim saying while Care Park did disclose Judge’s personal information, it was allowed to under a clause in the Privacy Act 1993.

Judge called the decision, released today, “institutional injustice” and a travesty, and said he would consider what options he had to pursue the case.

Judge notched up the fines after Care Park took over management of Wintec’s parking building in central Hamilton and the price of parking for staff increased from $120 a year to $650.

Judge told a tribunal hearing at the Hamilton District Court in February not many staff could afford the hefty increase and that the fee did not guarantee a car park, only the right to hunt for one.

The 65-year-old said he was sometimes ticketed for helping students load film gear in a 10-minute loading zone, and that he had expected Care Park to send his fines to a debt collector so he could arrange a weekly payment.

He told the tribunal there was also coin-operated pay and display parking but this was stressful and made him late for class when he didn’t have the correct amount of coins.

Paul Judge's claim that Wintec interfered with his privacy was struck out in 2018 and now the same claim against Care Park NZ has been dismissed. Photo / NZME

Judge had worked at Wintec since 2002 and was a part-time moving image lecturer in the School of Media Arts, earning less than $62,000 a year when in February 2016 Care Park wrote to Wintec and asked for permission to clamp a car that had “over 20 parking tickets”.

The car park management company had an agreement with Wintec to clamp vehicles after four fines had been issued.

Wintec repeatedly asked for the registration, make and model of the car and indicated it would try to identify the owner, but Care Park did not provide those details.

Instead, it sent a detailed list of the parking infringements incurred by the vehicle.

At the same time, a colleague complained Judge had parked too close to her car and Wintec began a disciplinary process and investigation into whether Judge had breached its parking policy, which he claimed only ended after he complained to the Privacy Commissioner.

In September 2016, the commissioner found no privacy breach and Judge resigned shortly after in a settlement agreement with Wintec.

He said the stress of the situation was enormous and it took him six months to recover financially and psychologically, almost losing his house in the process.

Care Park told the tribunal because the parking ticket details did not include identifying details of Judge that it did not disclose personal information, but the tribunal disagreed.

It said the information was about an identifiable individual and that Wintec was able to work out who Judge was through its own knowledge and relationship with him.

However, the tribunal ruled that although Care Park did disclose personal information, it had reasonable grounds to do so.

Under Principle 11 of the Privacy Act an agency must not disclose personal information unless it believes the disclosure is for the purpose for which the information was originally collected or obtained.

The tribunal said it was satisfied Care Park thought it could genuinely disclose the information for enforcement purposes and said the disclosure was justified, the Privacy Act was not breached, and Judge’s privacy was not interfered with.

It dismissed Judge’s claim and said Care Park could apply for costs.

Judge told the Herald he was frustrated with the outcome and felt it was unfair. He believed the clause in Principle 11 of the Act was a “loophole” that needed addressing by Parliament.

“It just reeks of absolute injustice. I had trust in the system and it’s let me down.”

Judge, now a high-school reliever, claimed his career was “fundamentally destroyed over something so trivial”.