A former senior partner at a law firm has been suspended and ordered to pay $65,000 after he took two female interns on a drunken lunch trip to a sex shop.
Following the incident, as well as two other incidents involving junior colleagues, Richard Dean Palmer - known as Dean Palmer - was found guilty of a range of misconduct charges last year.
Five people had come forward, including three young women, from Palmer’s workplaces alleging sexual harassment and inappropriate behaviour that had spanned almost three years.
Earlier this year, the Lawyers and Conveyancers Disciplinary Tribunal met to decide on a penalty for Palmer and heard submissions from his lawyer that he was simply a “creature of his generation” and a tactile person who had not intended any sexual harassment or overtone.
Today, the tribunal released its decision in which it suspended Palmer, 65, for 18 months.
He was also ordered to pay $38,000 in legal costs and $26,000 to cover the costs of the Law Society.
The tribunal said that while the disciplinary process had been a lesson to Palmer it thought a more permeant consequence should be imposed in the form of a formal censure.
“Your conduct towards the complainants was reprehensible and disturbing to them,” the decision stated.
“In our Penalty Decision, we stated that we were concerned at your lack of insight into the harm caused by your actions. We trust that you will use the period of suspension imposed on you to reflect on these matters.”
The tribunal said Palmer’s actions brought the profession into disrepute and that it was “disgraceful and dishonorable conduct”.
The charges
The main charge against Palmer related to an incident in 2015 when he took two female law clerks to lunch at a BYO restaurant.
During the trip, both women began to receive texts from their colleagues asking where they were and both became anxious to return to work.
However, Palmer took them to another venue to purchase stronger liquor but both women poured it out when he wasn’t looking.
After then steering them to another place nearby, reassuring them they could blame him for being late, Palmer took the woman inside an adult sex shop and began talking to the shop assistant.
The interns told the tribunal they felt uncomfortable and “weird” about the situation. Palmer had obtained business cards from the store assistant and handed them to the women.
They described feeling obliged to go along with whatever Palmer was suggesting because of the power imbalance between them as summer clerks and him as a senior member of the firm.
“We regard Mr Palmer’s apparent lack of awareness of this dynamic as reprehensible,” the tribunal said in its decision last year.
“He also plied them with liquor, having taken them to a venue where it was not easy for them to ‘escape’, that he then insisted on further alcohol intake at two further venues and that he embarked on the highly inappropriate activity of taking them into an adult sex shop.”
Palmer’s employer, Anderson Lloyd, notified Palmer two days after the lunch that the situation would be investigated and suspended him from being in the office. His employment with the firm ended not long after.
In a 2017 incident, while working for Duncan Cotterill, Palmer was at a lunch where “a large amount of alcohol was consumed” and he proceeded to lean in close to a woman. He patted her on the knee and stroked her hair and shoulder. When she moved seats to get away from him he followed her.
The woman, an intermediate solicitor, likened the behaviour to “something a father might do” but was not appropriate between a senior colleague and an employee. She said it made her feel particularly uncomfortable.
Another charge related to a series of emails between Palmer and a first-year lawyer at the firm where he suggested taking her out to dinner in an email sent at 9pm on the same day the inappropriate touching occurred.
“I promise not to bite. Well not hard,” one of the emails read. Palmer told the tribunal it was his attempt at humour but it had fallen flat.
The tribunal will release their full reasons for their ruling of suspension at a later date.
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