First published NZ Herald, 22 November 2023
By Jeremy Wilkinson

Lawyer’s comments about judge land him before tribunal

A lawyer called a judge an “ignorant woman” in a 10-page memorandum filed to the Family Court and referred to it as a “vagina court” during a custody battle with his ex-wife.

The man has also accused the opposing counsel of committing perjury, defrauding the legal aid system, and said its employees were “feminist staff who had a bone to pick with men”.

The comments have landed him before a professional panel, and while he doesn’t have name suppression, NZME can’t name him because of Family Court restrictions.

In the memorandum, he said of the Family Court that “if you have a penis, then you will lose. The law … well, that doesn’t apply in the Family Court!”

“… the law is secondary to the vaginal operational protocol of the Family Court, and all practitioners associated with such appalling orders should hand in their practising certificates, as they do not stand for the law, rather they stand for gaming the system, which is not justice.”

The man, who was representing himself in Lawyers and Conveyancers Disciplinary Tribunal proceedings, said a Family Court judge had “incorrectly [interpreted] High Court precedent that a C-grade first-year law student would not have got wrong”.

He then said the judge and his ex-wife’s counsel had made mistakes that “an ignorant woman would make” and that the Family Court in general operated on a “vagina = win, penis = lose” basis.

His comments earned him a complaint to the Law Society which has taken him to the Lawyers and Conveyancers Disciplinary Tribunal, where he’s facing charges of disgraceful conduct.