Staff eventually complained about his conduct to the New Zealand Law Society and while the man admitted his behaviour was “egregious”, he claimed he didn’t know his employees could see his screen.
Now, the tribunal has ordered the man be suspended from law for three months, although he is no longer practising. He has also been censured and ordered to pay two of his victims who complained $5000 each.
“We find his conduct was reckless, so that staff members were repeatedly confronted with pornographic material,” the tribunal said.
“[The man’s] insensitivity and lack of thought about the effect his conduct would produce in his employees was remarkably obtuse.”
The tribunal said that because he resisted suggestions to rearrange his office, and that he clicked out of the content he was watching “we cannot imagine that he could not have been aware of the situation”.
“In our view, to claim otherwise amounts to wilful blindness. The conduct constitutes ongoing failure to observe a reasonable duty of care to his employees.”
‘Egregious’ behaviour
According to the agreed summary of facts, the man watched pornography at his firm’s office for four years from 2018 until 2022.
A legal secretary who walked in on him viewing the material multiple times a day told the Law Society she was afraid to tell her boss to stop, despite how uncomfortable they made her, because he could be verbally aggressive and condescending.
Another employee said that after viewing her boss watching porn in his office she felt uncomfortable and disgusted, but didn’t complain because she was intimidated by him.
Another female employee, a legal assistant, said she saw him looking at pornographic photos on his computer and was horrified, but assumed it was a one-off occurrence. But then it happened again and again, sometimes multiple times a day and she began to feel unsafe in the office.
The women then raised what they’d seen with another lawyer at the firm, who confronted the man.
In response, he said he had an addiction and needed to get help, but wouldn’t expose his staff to those images again.
But several months later, staff members began seeing pornographic images on the firm owner’s computer screen again.
One staff member quit, and the man agreed to work from home for a time.
The other lawyer filed a complaint to the New Zealand Law Society about the man’s behaviour, which the man admitted was “egregious”.
He said he was undergoing counselling to help with his addiction.
‘Addictive and dysfunctional behaviour’
Since the complaints were made, the man has left the legal profession and sought help for his addiction.
At the hearing last month, his lawyer Briar Webster, said he was struggling with active addiction that manifested as watching pornography.
“This was not, and is not, a case of a practitioner watching pornography simply for enjoyment,” she said.
Webster said her client had been attempting to “self-medicate” with pornography for mental health issues, and was now in a better place and had developed strategies with his counsellor to help him in times of stress.
His efforts at rehabilitation were recognised by the tribunal, and it was noted in their ruling that his “addictive and dysfunctional behaviour” arose from depression.
“Several personal stressors drove his compulsion to view the material at work, and the level of his compulsion explains why he found it difficult to resist relapse, despite having been put on notice by his staff,” the tribunal said.
“We find that [the man] has striven to rid himself of this dysfunctional compulsion. Although it is little comfort to his employees, we accept that he was not in a healthy frame of mind during the period.”
The tribunal said it applauded him for taking steps to address his addiction.
Jeremy Wilkinson is an Open Justice reporter based in Manawatū, covering courts and justice issues with an interest in tribunals. He has been a journalist for nearly a decade and has worked for NZME since 2022.
