However, that never happened and Care Park later could not explain why it didn’t follow its own policy to clamp after four outstanding parking fines.
Judge told the hearing in the Hamilton District Court he accumulated the fines through financial hardship and an over-zealous ticketing regime employed by Care Park.
He had worked at Wintec as a part-time moving image lecturer in the School of Media Arts since 2002 and earned less than $62,000 per year.
Until 2014, when Care Park took over management of the Wintec car park, the annual fee for staff parking was $90, increasing to $120.
Judge said Care Park immediately increased the annual fee to $650 and in protest a number of staff parked up a nearby hill for a year, including his manager who moaned about the situation to him.
“Not many staff members could afford that. The $650 didn’t give you the right to a car park. It gave you the right to hunt for one and there wasn’t enough.”
There was also pay and display parking but Judge said it was coin-operated which created stress if he didn’t have enough coins and often made him late for class.
He was also ticketed more than once while legitimately using a 10-minute loading bay to load student movie-making gear into his car, he said.
When asked by Care Park lawyer Mike King why he didn’t complain, Judge said he did write to Care Park once and had a ticket waived but after continuously being ticketed he gave up.
When Care Park asked Wintec permission to clamp the car on February 16, 2016, it included that the vehicle in question had been issued with more than 20 payment notices.
Two days later Care Park sent Wintec a list of the outstanding payment notices and associated dates, and reasons for their issue.
Judge said this was a breach of his privacy and was the catalyst for a series of events that led to his resignation from Wintec in October that year.
But King said although Wintec requested the name of the owner of the car in question twice, Care Park never provided it.
Judge said there was a gap in the email chain between Care Park and Wintec that did not explain how Wintec discovered he was the owner of the car with the outstanding fines.
On February 25, another staff member complained that Judge had parked too close to her car.
“Without access to my record of unpaid fines, or to an email discussion with Care Park regarding my parking breaches, Wintec would have been obliged under my employment contract to treat the complaint from my fellow staff member with low-level resolution strategies.”
Instead, Judge was invited to a disciplinary meeting and an investigation was launched by Wintec into whether Judge had breached its parking policy, which he said only stopped after he complained to the Privacy Commissioner.
“It was an incredible process of an absurd level of abuse and harassment that went on for a year.”
The Commissioner later found there was no breach of his privacy and Judge received a settlement from Wintec when he resigned.
He cited stress, anxiety, and depression as a result of the disciplinary process as reasons he was unable to continue at Wintec.
He also lost his research career as a result and said, then aged 60, he had been unable to find full-time work in his field since.
Judge’s original claim for damages including for loss of income and hurt and humiliation included Wintec but that was struck out in April 2018 after the tribunal said the settlement covered all claims Judge had against the polytechnic including that it allegedly breached his privacy.
King told the tribunal Care Park did not breach Judge’s privacy, and if the tribunal found the company did disclose personal information to Wintec, this was allowed under the Privacy Act 1993.
Under Principle 11 of the Act, an organisation may disclose personal information for the purpose for which it was originally collected or obtained, and King said managing the car park gave Care Park the right to disclose such information.
But Judge disagreed, saying this was an ambiguous “grey area” and that if nothing else came of his claim the Act should be clarified.
King said Judge’s $250,000 claim was out of all proportion, that there was no formal diagnosis of anxiety or depression, and no evidence Judge couldn’t get another job.
Judge accepted the claim should now be 50 per cent less because Wintec was no longer a party but King said it should be at zero.
Under cross-examination, Judge was asked by King whether he accepted that Care Park had a right to seek permission to clamp his car, to which Judge agreed.
King also asked why Judge simply didn’t pay the fines and why he relied on being sent to a debt collector to arrange payment.
“I didn’t have the money,” Judge replied.
The tribunal’s decision is reserved.
