Property developer Andrew Montgomerie is accused of having wounded another man at a 2021 cocktail party in Westmere. Photo composite / Alyse Wright and NZ Police
The high-profile case of an alleged glassing inside a Westmere mansion was on track to finally be resolved this week after lingering in the Auckland District Court for nearly five years.
But after more than nine hours of deliberations stretching over two days, jurors tasked with deciding property developer Andrew Montgomerie’s fate informed Judge Paul Murray this afternoon that they were hopelessly deadlocked.
The panel was sent away with a thank you for their hard work. The case will be called again in two weeks, on track for an eventual retrial.
Montgomerie, 58, was charged in April 2021 with wounding with reckless disregard for the safety of others after he smashed a glass of vodka soda against a colleague’s neck following an exchange of insults at the lavish party, causing a section of the soiree to morph into a roped-off crime scene.
Over four days of witness testimony, jurors heard a number of conflicting accounts about the party in general and about the specific incident.
Confusion seemed to surround the purpose of the gathering - described at various times as a cocktail party, a 40th birthday or a surprise engagement - as well as what kind of glassware the defendant was holding and whether a platter of cocaine was circulated among guests.
Fellow developer Mark Ensom hosted the party, which included a DJ and catering staff passing around platters of champagne in the back garden of his seaside property.
The most important inconsistencies of the trial, however, regarded how Montgomerie and the other man interacted that night. The complainant has sought permanent name suppression, with the request likely to remain pending until the next trial.
The defence argued that the complainant, amped up on cocaine and alcohol, was the initial aggressor - starting out by trying to embarrass Montgomerie in front of their peers about a disputed $4500 work invoice from years earlier.
When the complainant then allegedly got into Montgomerie’s face, tensed up and raised his hand slightly, the defendant instinctively raised his arm to deflect an anticipated blow and accidentally struck the other man with his glass, he claimed in the witness box.
The complainant, meanwhile, said the opposite was true. He said Montgomerie showed initial aggression with an unusually strong handshake before accusing him of spreading “rumours” while still gripping his hand. They exchanged insults but the complainant was turning to walk away when the larger man blindsided him with the glassing, he recounted.
Defence lawyer Ron Mansfield, KC, spent the bulk of his closing address this week attacking the complainant’s credibility and describing his testimony - pre-recorded in 2024 - as highly exaggerated and purposefully misleading due to his long-running spite for Montgomerie.
If jurors didn’t believe the complainant’s account, he said, “the Crown has no case at all”.
Mansfield reminded jurors that the complainant said it felt like Montgomerie was pushing on the base of the broken glass in an attempt to grind it deeper into his neck. But medical evidence didn’t support that, and neither did the only independent witness account, he argued.
While the 2.5cm deep cut required exploratory surgery on the night of the incident, the doctor ultimately found the wound to be non-life-threatening and found no glass shards inside it.
Mansfield also focused heavily on the complainant’s cocaine use, which the man admitted to that night when paramedics were attending to him. The man told jurors he had a “very small amount” after someone was passing around a plate of pre-arranged lines but it wasn’t enough to feel intoxicated.
The defence lawyer acknowledged there must have been cocaine somewhere inside the house for the complainant to have snorted, but he lambasted the idea of catering staff offering platters of the substance. That sort of open drug use “just doesn’t happen” in mixed company, he said, noting that all other witnesses also scoffed at the idea.
“He had to admit he’s had some cocaine, and I have no doubt he regrets it,” Mansfield added. “He’s backtracked to a ridiculous point - ‘just an eentsy-peentsy-little line..”
Whether “disinhibited by the cocaine he’s just snorted” or the alcohol, the man obviously wanted to confront Montgomerie at the party and air an old grievance, Mansfield said.
“He flinches and tries to look confident and tough, and this guy [Montgomerie] just ... instinctively reacts as if getting a fright,” he said, describing catering glasses as cheap and easy to accidentally shatter. “People accidentally get cut at parties all the time.”
Conversely, prosecutors Ruby van Boheemen and Isabella Joe spent the majority of their closing address painting Montgomerie’s version of events as too strange to be believed.
“It was no accident ...,” van Boheemen said, adding: “This was the end result of tension and hostility that had been building up for quite some time” and finally reached a “boiling point” for Montgomerie at the party when he was insulted in front of his friends and peers.
“Mr Montgomerie wasn’t thinking rationally in that moment,” she added. “He was furious. This was a violent reaction in the heat of the moment.”
He had a clear motive and the injury supports the complainant’s explanation of what happened, she said, arguing that the glass should have been nowhere near the man’s neck if Montgomerie had actually been intending to deflect a blow.
She noted that the only independent witness, a woman who has also requested name suppression, said she did not see the complainant make any threatening or sudden move prior to Montgomerie raising the glass to his neck.
Van Boheemen suggested that Montgomerie changed his explanation about what happened several times to suit the evidence as it became known to him.
In a text to a friend, he initially suggested the other man punched him. Days later, in a written statement to police, he said the other man “threw a punch” at his head as the defendant was walking away. That change was perhaps because he had no injuries to his face and realised he wouldn’t be believed, van Boheemen suggested.
Then, while giving evidence earlier this week, Montgomerie said there was no thrown punch but instead a tensing up and a hand movement of several hundred millimetres that caused the defensive action. That change, van Boheemen suggested, was because by that time he had listened to the testimony of the independent witness who said the complainant hadn’t moved until after he was injured.
Montgomerie dismissed his inaccurate text as simply trying to end a conversation with someone he didn’t want to talk to. The prior police statement, he insisted, wasn’t an inaccuracy so much as a broad summary that he intended to elaborate on later at trial.
The Crown didn’t buy it, nor did it consider credible Montgomerie’s explanation for having left the party almost immediately after the incident. He and his partner both said they didn’t realise the other man had been injured until seeing a TV news update later that night about a “champagne shanking” in Westmere.
But he would have been bleeding from his own hand injury and CCTV showed a chaotic scene behind the couple as they stepped out of the house, van Boheemen said. Witnesses described the complainant calling out for help and his wife’s “shrieking wail”, while another partygoer recounted following the couple down the street, yelling at them to stop.
For both to claim they had no idea of an injury at that point was “totally implausible”, van Boheemen said, arguing that the hasty exit instead “demonstrates a consciousness of guilt”.
“He knew he’d done something wrong and he wanted to get out of there before authorities arrived,” she said.
Jurors were told the case had been delayed for so long in part because of a fall, which happened after the defendant was charged, in which he suffered a debilitating head injury.
If convicted at retrial, Montgomerie could face up to seven years’ imprisonment.
Craig Kapitan is an Auckland-based journalist covering courts and justice. He joined the Herald in 2021 and has reported on courts since 2002 in three newsrooms in the US and New Zealand.
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