A former partner at a top law firm has been described as a “bit touchy feely” by his lawyer after he took two female interns on a drunken trip to a sex shop.

Richard Dean Palmer - known as Dean Palmer - was found guilty of a range of misconduct charges last year for the incident as well as two other incidents involving junior colleagues.

Five people came forward, including three young women, from Palmer’s workplaces to paint a picture of sexual harassment and inappropriate behaviour spanning almost three years.

Today, 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, and that he hadn’t intended any sexual harassment or overtone.

The New Zealand Law Society was seeking a suspension of 18 months or two years for Palmer and said it was in the same realm of offending as Russel McVeagh’s James Gardner-Hopkins who was found guilty of six charges of misconduct, including for touching interns inappropriately at work functions in 2015.

The charges

The first charge against Palmer relates to an incident in 2015 while working for the firm Anderson Lloyd where Palmer took two female law clerks to lunch at a BYO restaurant.

After an hour or more both women started 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 some stronger liquor which both women poured out when he wasn’t looking.

He then took them back to the office car park and instead of going back to work he steered both women to drink at another place nearby and reassured them they could blame him for being late.

Palmer took both women 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 with Palmer obtaining business cards from the store assistant, and handing them to the clerks.

They made it to the final venue where they drank some more before returning to the office at about 5pm.

The women 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.

“We definitely consider that his behaviour would be considered by right-thinking members of the profession as disgraceful and dishonourable.”

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 another incident in 2017, while working for Duncan Cotterill, during a lunch where “a large amount of alcohol was consumed”, Palmer leaned in close to a woman, 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 night the inappropriate touching occurred.

“I promise not to bite. Well not hard,” one of the emails read, which Palmer said was an attempt at humour that had fallen flat.

Submissions

The New Zealand Law Society’s lawyer Sally Carter told the tribunal today it was seeking an 18-month to two-year suspension as a starting point for Palmer.

She said that at the last hearing he appeared to show “very little insight” into his offending.

“He accepted things were unwise but he really didn’t understand the impact that his behaviour had on those junior lawyers,” Carter said.

Carter noted that the case wasn’t as serious as the one against Gardner-Hopkins where the starting point had been for him to be struck off.

James Gardner-Hopkins. Photo / Supplied

“While this conduct is not as serious, it nevertheless is not that far removed from it especially when you look at the repetitive nature of what has occurred here.”

All Palmer’s victims were granted name suppression and only one of them was interested in receiving compensation from him, which the Law Society sought today.

Carter said it wasn’t her aim to “parade” Palmer in front of the tribunal and seek an over-extreme example of him, but public confidence in the legal profession needed to see him punished appropriately for his actions.

Palmer’s lawyer Philippa Fee said that in the “twilight years” of his career, a suspension would effectively be a striking off.

“It will be the death knell of his career,” she said of the 65-year-old.

In her submissions she said the offending was the only blemish on his extensive career and he had learned his lesson, learning to maintain a professional distance with colleagues despite being an eager socialite.

Fee described him as potentially being a “bit touchy feely” and a “creature of his generation”, before explaining that people of Palmer’s age were generally more tactile and socially vivacious.

“Some practitioners have not caught up with the new normal,” she said.

The tribunal questioned Fee’s assertion that there was no sexual overtone to any of Palmer’s conduct.

“Really?” one tribunal member asked. “All of the complainants are young women. I don’t imagine he felt the need to stroke a male colleague’s hair or take them to a sex shop.

“Doesn’t the fact it all has to do with women make it sexual in nature?”

Fee said that Palmer could easily have touched a male colleague’s arm or patted them on the back, but it “might be a little weird”.

“Why would it be a little weird if it was a man but not a woman?” another tribunal member asked. “Surely he wouldn’t have stroked your hair?”

Fee: “If we’d been out for lunch for five hours and drinking, maybe?”

Overall, Fee said Palmer had learned his lesson and had extensive character witnesses describing him as socially outgoing and whose successful 42-year career had hinged on these interactions with clients and colleagues.

He accepted he should have kept his hands to himself and since the investigation into his conduct, had come to understand that the power imbalance between a senior partner and a female intern was what was most inappropriate about the incidents.

She opposed compensation for the one victim who wanted it being as high as $12,000, and said that decisions in the Human Rights Review Tribunal had seen compensation in the area of $5000 to $10,000 for far-more serious sexual offending.

The tribunal reserved its decision.

- Jeremy Wilkinson, Open Justice