Court rejects appeal over $21,000 order

By MATHEW DEARNALEY

An Auckland patent attorney has failed in a bid to overturn an Employment Tribunal award against him of more than $21,000.

The Employment Court has turned down an appeal by John David Hardie for a re-hearing of an unfair dismissal case won by Dr Martin Charles Round.

Mr Hardie sacked Dr Round, a lawyer, for allegedly falsifying time sheets.

Mr Hardie alleged that the tribunal, which awarded costs of $11,362 and compensation of $10,000, gave him insufficient time to prepare a defence against a personal grievance which he thought had been abandoned after a delay of 12 months.

But Chief Judge Tom Goddard said in a decision which has added $2500 in costs to Mr Hardie's legal bill that his handling of the disciplinary process against Dr Round was "so abysmal" the result was inevitable.

He said Mr Hardie was the author of his own misfortune because he refused to consider any explanation offered by Dr Round for absences from his office.

Dr Round said his work required visits to places such as the High Court library and the Companies Office, which went unobserved in a monitoring exercise by Mr Hardie's office manager.

"The employer thought there was no need for any finesse in this situation because he expected the employee to be overwhelmed by shame and to admit his wrongdoing," Judge Goddard said in his decision.

"However, this was not going to happen if the employer had jumped to a wrong conclusion based on incomplete information and then refused all offers to supplement that incomplete information with material that may have thrown a completely different light on his suspicions."

Dr Round, a former academic whose doctorate is unrelated to the law, worked as a solicitor-clerk for Mr Hardie for $15 an hour after returning from overseas in 1997.

The judge said Mr Hardie was frank in telling the court that he set out to entrap Dr Round on the basis of information received, instructing his office manager to monitor the employee's claimed hours.

After learning of a discrepancy of seven hours over a week, and 10 hours in a fortnight, he summoned Dr Round to a brief meeting at which he was summarily dismissed.

Appealing for a rehearing, Mr Hardie told the court he intended producing documents and evidence which he believed would show up Dr Round's claims as "untenable lies".

But Judge Goddard said circumstances allowing a losing party a second chance to offer new evidence were necessarily limited, and Mr Hardie had not persuaded him he had anything which may be enough to tilt the balance in his favour.