How a court blunder poured salt in the wounds of sexually harassed lawyers
Monday, 8 December 2025
A series of serious bungles by High Court staff led to the names of five women sexually harassed by a senior lawyer being published online.
The errors have resulted in an apology by Auckland High Court’s registry, and retraining for staff - but only after inquiries were made by The Post.
For one woman, it was the second time her name has been mistakenly released, after a Law Society file on one of the incidents was mistakenly released to a blogger, requiring a court injunction to prevent publication of her name.
In the second incident, in April this year, an Auckland High Court staff member was instructed to send numerous legal publishers a redacted version of a judgment dealing with sexual harassment by a senior lawyer, and his disciplinary process by the Law Society.
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However, the case officer sent both the redacted version of the judgment, and an unredacted version, which named the five women involved in the case, as well as the senior lawyer, Mr H.
The unredacted version was sent to six legal publishers, the New Zealand Law Society library, and four law school libraries throughout the country.
Three days later, legal website The Capital Letter contacted the case officer, querying if they should have received the unredacted version. The case officer was instructed to contact all outlets the unredacted judgment had been sent to, asking them to not publish this version.
However, the case officer only contacted The Capital Letter.
On April 29, lawyers for the Law Society, and Mr H, advised the High Court registry that the unredacted judgment, containing the lawyer’s name, and the names of the women he sexually harassed, was available online.
The registry immediately contacted all the legal publishers, and the unredacted version was pulled down by the following day.
The Law Society’s lawyers sent a short email notifying the women their names had been exposed.
But neither they nor the court apologised to any of them.
Instead, according to a letter sent to the women in September by the registry, the case officer offered an apology only to Mr H, who had admitted sexually harassing the women, for mistakenly publishing his name, and considered the matter closed.
In August, The Post began inquiries into the matter.
Over five weeks, the Ministry of Justice and courts responded to a series of questions about what had occurred.
But, despite what appeared to be continuing confusion about the handling of the affair, the Justice Ministry’s spokesperson, Andrea King, told The Post on September 10, “The ministry considers this matter closed”, wouldn’t answer further questions, and refused to say why.
The same day, the Auckland court manager and registrar, John Richardson, wrote to the women affected by Mr H’s actions, apologising for what had happened.
Richardson stated he became aware of the issue only following The Post’s investigation, and then launched a review.
He accepted “registry mistakes caused this problem”; the women should have been apologised to - not just Mr H; and “corrective action and re-training” for staff would take place.
“We had a duty to protect the identities of the people named in the judgment,” Richardson said. “We fell short of the mark here.
“The case officer, the court registry, and I am very sorry for any distress or inconvenience this mistake may have caused you.”
One of the affected women said releasing her name just tipped salt in the wound of being sexually harassed, and Mr H facing virtually no penalties.
“I’m angry and I’m frustrated. Frustrated for women, frustrated for the profession. It’s not good enough.
“The impact on the women is just lost in all of this.”
Another of the women said she had received a matter-of-fact email from Law Society lawyers in late April, but nobody told her about the scale of the court’s blunder, or how long their names were accessible to anyone visiting those websites. It wasn’t until September, when the High Court apologised, that she heard anything more about the incident.
Minister of Courts Nicole McKee said she was aware of the distress caused by publishing the names of the women subjected to inappropriate behaviour.
“What happened should not have occurred, and I want to acknowledge the harm and anxiety this will have caused those individuals.”
But McKee had confidence steps taken, including refresher training for staff following the incident, meant the courts’ high standards would be upheld.
However, McKee, the courts, and the Ministry of Justice have refused to answer any questions about their obligations under the Privacy Act, and why the Privacy Commissioner wasn’t alerted to the breach by the court.
Courts’ judicial functions, including the issuing of court judgments, are not covered by the Privacy Act, but their administrative functions are.
In his letter to the affected women, Richardson described the errors as “administrative mistakes”.
And leading privacy lawyer Kathryn Dalziel said once the court became aware the unredacted version had been sent to publishers, and failed to contact all the publishers, this was an administrative function, and they should have notified the Privacy Commissioner and the women, as required when there has been a privacy breach.
“In my view, it cannot be part of the judicial function of a Court to do nothing about a breach of a non-publication order.”
Dalziel said even though months had passed, the court was legally obliged to notify the Privacy Commissioner of its mistake.
Privacy Commissioner Michael Webster said whether a court’s actions are administrative or judicial is decided on a case-by-case basis and he could assess a court’s actions if a complaint was made.
He also pointed out courts could notify individuals about privacy incidents, even if they weren’t required to do so under the Privacy Act.