WARNING: This story details sexual harassment and may be distressing.

A senior lawyer’s drunken offer to a colleague that he’d give her the best orgasm of her life in a taxi faces suspension from practising.

“What the f*** are you doing?” the woman said as the senior partner knelt in front of her in a van and attempted to prise her knees apart.

“I am going to give you the best orgasm you have ever had in your life,” the lawyer, who has interim name suppression, said.

Yesterday, he admitted one charge of misconduct and was found guilty of misconduct on two other charges by the Lawyers and Conveyancers Disciplinary Tribunal relating to three drunken nights involving two women colleagues.

The case was sent back to a legal complaints committee last year after the New Zealand Law Society asserted the lawyer’s behaviour was worse than the committee initially found.

It asked for a review of a June 2021 finding of unsatisfactory conduct - which is a lesser charge than misconduct - and said the standards committee prosecuting the lawyer should have referred the matter to the tribunal.

The first two charges were in relation to the same legal executive at the firm they both worked at.

The first incident occurred after a work function in 2018 when the pair were the only two left in a taxi at the end of the night.

The lawyer tried to put his hands between the woman’s thighs, which she did not consent to, and described him as being “irritatingly persistent”.

Eighteen months later at the firm’s Christmas function in 2019 the partner was alone in a taxi with the same female colleague when he put his arm around her shoulders and then slid his hand down to touch her buttocks.

“F*** off and stop touching me,” she told him before requesting the taxi driver drop her off first so she didn’t have to be alone with him.

Although the facts were accepted by the lawyer, he disputed that the conduct amounted to misconduct.

He also admitted the facts in the third incident and, in that case, did not dispute it was misconduct.

That incident involved a female legal executive at the firm where they both worked.

Again the lawyer found himself alone in a taxi with the woman and proceeded to slide his foot on to the victim’s legs and knees, meaning she constantly had to adjust herself to avoid him.

As soon as they were alone in the taxi the lawyer got down on his knees and tried to prise the woman’s legs apart and said: “I am going to give you the best orgasm of your life”.

The woman told him there was absolutely no way she would allow him to do that so he got off the floor and sat “extremely close”, putting his arm around her shoulders.

He then proceeded to tell the woman that she needed to have more sex and made comments about the importance of having enough sex.

“Promise me that you will have lots of sex these holidays,” he said to her before talking about “giving the taxi driver a show” and motioned touching the woman’s breasts.

He then attempted to kiss her goodnight as he left the taxi.

One of the women suffered “significant trauma” over the sexual harassment and complained to her employer when she returned to the office in January 2020, prompting an investigation by the Law Society’s standards committee.

The tribunal referenced the case of former Russell McVeagh partner James Gardner-Hopkins at the hearing today. Photo / Supplied

The lawyer told the law firm’s partners he had suffered from a condition - though its nature was redacted from the earlier decision - since his early 20s and had never received adequate counselling or treatment.

He said external social events had always been difficult and he resorted to alcohol as a coping mechanism.

The married father of school-aged children had “let down so many people in 10 minutes of drunkenness [but was not] in any way blaming alcohol” he told the committee last year.

The standards committee said the conduct was aggravated because it persisted, however it made the lesser finding of unsatisfactory conduct and fined the man $4000, ordered him to pay costs of $3000 and directed him to compensate each of the women $4000.

However, the Law Society sought a review saying the committee’s decision was inconsistent with the national standards committee where lawyers engaging in similar conduct had been referred to the tribunal.

One of those was former Russell McVeagh partner James Gardner-Hopkins who was found guilty on six charges of misconduct relating to drunken, tactile dancing with female colleagues at a Christmas party.

Tribunal hearing

At yesterday’s hearing lawyers for the standards committee said the man’s conduct was repetitive and targeted his colleagues when they were alone with him and unable to easily escape.

They also highlighted the man was a partner at the firm while his victims were younger female colleagues who were essentially his employees.

Richard Dean Palmer's case was also mentioned by the tribunal and counsel today. Palmer took two female interns on a drunken lunchtime trip to a sex shop. Photo / File

They drew parallels to the James Gardner-Hopkins case and to a recent tribunal hearing for Richard Dean Palmer who took two female summer law clerks on a lunchtime drunken trip to a sex toy store in Christchurch.

Standards committee counsel Kate Feltham sought censure and a suspension of 12-18 months for the now 65-year-old man.

“We’re not just dealing with a one-off incident against just one person,” she said.

“The incidents occurred in a taxi ... a confined space where they were unable to get away from the practitioner as easily as they could have if this had occurred at a work drinks function.”

Feltham said if the complainants had gone to the police then the incident where he tried to prise one victim’s legs apart would have likely been treated as indecent assault.

The tribunal’s panel suggested the lawyer’s offending was more serious than the Palmer incident because of the level of touching involved and because the complainants couldn’t get away from him.

The lawyer’s counsel, Philip Morgan, KC, told the tribunal the age difference between his client and the complainants was not as wide as either the Gardner-Hopkins or the Palmer cases and was mitigated by the fact that he had worked with them for some time.

“I think it would have been worse if it was a stranger,” he said.

Tribunal chairman Dr John Adams challenged Morgan on that point and asked if someone loitering in a park attacked a random jogger would that be more or less serious than if they had attacked a friend.

 “There’s the added layering of the work relationship and the friendly relationship, surely that’s a greater breach of trust?” Adams questioned.

Morgan acknowledged there had been a breach of trust but said his client hadn’t leveraged his senior position at the firm in the way other practitioners who had been before the tribunal in recent years had.

“That’s reflected in that the complainant was sufficiently comfortable to tell him to ‘f*** off’,” Morgan said.

He opposed suspension on behalf of his client and said it was unnecessary on top of effectively being expelled from the firm he worked for and being unemployed for some nine months.

“He’s managed to get through 40 years of conduct without any complaint,” Morgan said. “Is it really necessary to suspend somebody who’s been able to behave himself for so long?”

The tribunal reserved its decision.

- Jeremy Wilkinson, Open Justice