The wife of an Air NZ employee who was made redundant was so unhappy with the way a manager spoke about him that she launched a defamation case against her - then tried to blackmail her into settling.

The “concerted campaign” by the wife left the manager needing therapy to address the emotional trauma and had such a significant impact on her work, two weeks into a new job, she was subsequently made redundant herself.

Rachel Wills pleaded guilty in the Christchurch District Court to a single charge of blackmailing the woman, and was sentenced to five months of community detention, with a 7pm to 6am curfew. She was also ordered to pay $4000 in reparation to her victim for emotional harm.

Wills, who was then 44, was convicted last year but the judge’s sentencing decision in her case has only just been published on the District Courts’ website.

Her offending had its genesis in the layoffs at Air New Zealand as the Covid pandemic was beginning to bite in 2020.

Wills’ husband was one of those made redundant from the airline. Her victim, whose name was redacted from the decision, was then an Air New Zealand manager.

In the course of the redundancy process, the manager spoke about Wills’ husband in a way the couple felt was defamatory.

The couple began defamation proceedings in the High Court at Christchurch, and then sought to settle them by making threats to the victim’s lawyer, Tim Mackenzie.

 “You were aggressively trying to facilitate a settlement of the defamation proceeding,” Judge Tom Gilbert said in his sentencing ruling for the blackmail charge.

In November 2021, Wills emailed Mackenzie saying that she had video from three different sources of the victim being involved in a car chase with her husband.

She said if she did not have a settlement agreement and confidentiality clause within five days, she would send the video footage to the board of directors and leadership team of the victim’s new employer.

Wills repeated the threat in another email the following day.

The judgment decision says Wills was trying to get the “best monetary offer” out of the victim, along with an apology for the alleged defamation.

“It turns out that video footage that you claimed you had of a car chase involving [the victim] and your husband was not, in fact, in your possession,” Judge Gilbert said.

Wills and her husband withdrew the defamation proceedings. They were later ordered to pay $6500 in costs and disbursements.

Judge Gilbert said the victim had found it hard to separate the impact of the blackmail from the broader defamation case that was brought against her.

“However, the whole course of conduct has clearly left her very shaken and taking active steps to avoid the possibility of coming across you and your husband.

“The stress caused her to take two weeks off work. She has had ongoing therapy to address the emotional trauma,” Judge Gilbert said.

“As I understand it, her position is that she was just doing her professional role at Air New Zealand and, because of that, she unwantedly became the subject of a concerted campaign by you and your husband.”

By that time, the victim had also left Air New Zealand and was working for another employer, but was subsequently made redundant from her new job.

“She believes that the way in which this case impacted her contributed to her redundancy, which has left her with significant financial losses and an ongoing need for counselling.”

Wills applied for a discharge without conviction and name suppression on the blackmail charge, which the victim opposed and the judge denied.

“That blackmail involved threats to take steps to ruin [the victim’s] relationship and reputation with her new employer, including through the use of evidence that you said you had when, in fact, you did not have it,” Judge Gilbert said.

“So not only was it a blackmail, it has the flavour of attempting to pervert the proper disposition of civil defamation proceedings.”

The judge also disagreed with a psychologist’s report which described Wills’ character as being “of the highest level” despite a previous brush with the law.

“In fact that ‘brush with the law’ … involved five instances of forgery in 2007 in respect of which you were sentenced under a different name in 2012,” Judge Gilbert said.

He said Wills’ forgery and dishonesty at that time changed forever the lives of people who were “hugely” impacted financially, and two of them were bankrupted as a result.

Judge Gilbert said Wills avoided being sent to prison in 2012 after she agreed to pay reparation to her victims.