Nelson’s lawyer, Sue Gray, was fined $ 1500 and was ordered to pay $ 14,190 in costs and reimbursements associated with procedures brought against her after she referred to a child whose identity was suppressed.
Gray reached national headlines during the Covid pandemic and the rise of anti-vocination activism.
Gray was the spokesman for a baby’s parents in the center of a stalemate about the blood use of vaccinated people in what doctors argued to be necessary, saving surgery.
Gray made mistakes for two on -line interviews.
The first interview was with former Liz Gunn, transferred to a social media platform.
On two occasions, Gray realized that he had used an abbreviated form of his mother’s name inadvertently.
The second interview was the next day with a Canadian interviewer, when Gray mentioned the short name of the baby four times.
He attracted a complaint from lawyers to whatu ora/health nz, who landed gray before the court that supervises the conduct of lawyers.
New Zealand lawyers and transporters, a disciplinary court, found last year that Gray’s action represented unsatisfactory conduct, as it fell below an expected pattern but was not deliberate.
There was a similar action the previous year, when Gray’s comments on Covid-19 vaccines were not misconduct because they were made as private citizens.
In a penalty decision released this month, the court emphasized the importance of professionals who advocated court orders about the suppression of names and the identification of details, and ash deliberately violated the order, there was a discovery of misconduct.
The court found that Gray had struggled to fulfill the suppression and landslide occurred in the long interviews course and, in one case, the late time in which it was conducted.
He said that at the end of the two long interviews, Gray had become a little “sloppy” and let go of his guard, making a professional error to violate the orders of suppression.
“As we accepted that Gray had deliberately assumed the family’s role of the family because of his fear that his clients can violate the order of suppression, given their profession of making the public aware of their situation and the reason for the position they were assuming, we observe that, by adopting this role, Mrs.
He also said among a list of mitigating factors that Gray’s customers supported it and it was relevant that they did not want to see it disciplined by their mistakes, as well as the fact that the family and child’s names were already in the public domain and that there was a family photography in New Zealand.
Gray said at the hearing that, at one level, it was a case of “the horse having locked”, given the frantic interest in the situation of the family and in public protests outside a court that included photos of the child’s face in the posters.
The court then responded by saying that the order of suppression aimed to prevent what was already in the public domain from traveling even more, for the good of the child in the future.
The court said in deciding on a penalty that did not consider that the complete costs of compensation were appropriate in this matter and ordered a “slightly reduced contribution” to the costs of the standard committee, which reached just over $ 25,000.
Gray was fined and ordered to pay a contribution of $ 10,000 to the costs of the committee and $ 4190 in court costs.
NZME approached Gray to comment.
– Tracy Neal
