The Scene of the Crime

by Steve Braunias

  I asked if he reached into his glovebox. He said, ‘What?’ I asked again. He shook his head, and continued his story.

  ‘At this time I’m angry. Before, I’m not angry. So I come out my car. I go to his car. When I standing in front of his car, he start driving. Drive over me! Not stop! Fuck!’

  I asked if he went to the driver’s side, and he said, ‘No. Last thing I see, the lady grab his arm. She angry with him.’

  I said the passenger was Hallwright’s daughter, who was 16.

  ‘No!’ he shouted. ‘Lie! One hundred per cent lie! He talked to the judges, he say his daughter there. They say, “Okay.” But the lady almost 40 years. Not his daughter. Lie!’

  Why lie?

  ‘I don’t know! He’s very popular guy. I think it’s his girlfriend or something like that. I think so.’

  He mentioned Hallwright talking to the judge; did he think the judge was in on it, that he and Hallwright knew each other?

  ‘I think so. They seem to. But we don’t have any evidence . . . Police, judges, he give to them, I think!’ He mimed passing money under the table. ‘I don’t trust this fucken country! No justice! No honest peoples!’

  At such times he was infantile, a loose unit. His injuries made him a pitiful sight, but he was belligerent, unstable. He said he’d had nine operations in New Zealand, and cursed his surgeons; the tenth operation was in Korea, and he claimed it cost a staggering $100,000.

  I spoke with Korean lawyer Ken Oh, from Kenton Chambers, who dealt with Kim. He said, ‘Mr Kim wanted to have surgery in Korea because so many people there have car accidents and medical people there have more practical experience than in New Zealand. So many people, so many cars, so many accidents! The surgeons are much, much better than in your country. So Mr Kim come to see me and talk about how to recover at least that amount.’

  How?

  ‘He wanted to sue.’

  5

  Everything that Hallwright did after he hit Kim was a tactical mistake of some sort. He made no mention of it to Forsyth Barr. He regarded it as a matter outside of work, and a minor matter at that: ‘A policeman at the scene said there’d probably have to be charges under the Transport Act.’

  But even when the police laid serious criminal charges — reckless driving, and intent to injure — Hallwright remained silent. He fought hard for name suppression, taking it to the High Court, but that only inspired the wrath of Whaleoil, Cameron Slater’s fulminating blog, which has made a crusade of taunting those who try to hide behind gagging orders.

  Forsyth Barr’s managing director, Neil Paviour-Smith, first heard that one of his employees was facing serious criminal charges when he was shown a post on Whaleoil.

  ‘Neil was so angry that he’d had to find out through the blog,’ said a former colleague. ‘He was pissed off about that, big time. Guy needed to come clean. He needed to get it out in the open.’

  But the company took no immediate action, and viewed him as innocent until proven otherwise. If the jury had reached a verdict of not guilty at his criminal trial, it was ‘entirely possible’ that he’d have kept his job, the Employment Court heard. Hallwright assured the firm that he would be acquitted, and carried on with his duties all throughout 2011.

  PR trout Tina Symmans, a director at Forsyth Barr, told the Employment Relations Authority hearing that she had met Hallwright at a social function around that time, and tried to offer her advice. He waved it away, saying he was confident of acquittal.

  ‘I was astounded by . . . his arrogance in thinking that this really didn’t matter . . . He insisted that it wasn’t his fault and that the Asian man was to blame. Given his approach, it’s unsurprising the media gave the matter the prominence they did.’

  In fact, his ‘approach’ was to tell her exactly what he thought, and to present the facts as he saw them. But was he really so blasé? The stress of waiting for the trial led him to begin counselling. I asked if he was living in dread back then, and he said, ‘Oh yeah. It was a big thing to have hanging over your head. A huge strain.’

  Hallwright engaged the services of Paul Davison QC. ‘He said I had a very strong chance of beating the intent to injure thing, and the other one, reckless driving, was kind of each way.’

  The trial finally took place in March 2012. The judge dropped the charges of intent to injure, but the jury found Hallwright guilty of reckless driving causing grievous bodily harm.

  ‘I was shocked. Very shocked. That felt terrible. Absolutely terrible.’

  The hits just kept coming. Forsyth Barr began termination proceedings; Davison, as his lawyer, urged them to hold off until sentencing. That was another bombshell.

  Hallwright’s sentence, 250 hours’ community work, was lenient. But the real offence was caused by the judge, Raoul Neave, when he took it into his head to excoriate the media for their ‘puerile’ coverage of Hallwright’s saga. He got that right. But he was buying a fight that only served to get Hallwright beat up on all over again.

  Neave said, ‘When it became apparent you had come into contact with Mr Kim, you called the police and in every sense seem to have behaved in a responsible fashion.’ It wasn’t what anyone wanted to hear; with friends like Neave, Hallwright attracted even more enemies. A witness to the incident, pizza-maker Giampiero De Falco, ran to the Weekend Herald and gave them a great quote for the front page: ‘If it’s not hit-and-run, what the hell is it?’

  Neave also described Hallwright as someone with an ‘impeccable reputation’. He got that right, too, but it led to howls of outrage, and was perceived as old-boy cronyism at its worst — one law for the poor, one for the rich.

  The Auckland Council for Civil Liberties jumped on the bandwagon. Council president Barry Wilson wrote to the solicitor-general, asking for the sentence to be appealed.

  Why? The council’s interest in the affair was almost frivolous, certainly unbalanced. Wilson took a statement from Kim, but didn’t read the court transcripts, just the press reports. He told me, ‘I think I looked at the press reports in some detail. There were some pretty detailed press reports.’

  That’s all?

  ‘Well, what else can I rely on at the time? Are you suggesting that I shouldn’t have taken up this issue on the basis of the information available to me, that I should have waited some considerable time before I made any comment?’

  If that were the question, what’s the answer?

  ‘When one is asked to comment on issues, one comments without full information. Everybody does that.’

  Amazing. I asked him what he wrote in his letter to the solicitor-general.

  ‘I suggested the sentence was inadequate, and he should appeal.’

  What kind of sentence did he think was more appropriate?

  ‘I’d need to think about that.’

  Had he been thinking in terms of imprisonment?

  After a long pause, he said, ‘I’d need to think about it.’

  Did he think about it at the time?

  ‘Yes, I did.’

  And what did he think?

  ‘Oh, look, I’m not prepared to be cross-examined about it. I’m not here to be cross-examined by you. I’ve got a day’s work to get on with. If you want to go into it in more detail, the weekend’s better for me.’

  But it’s not a detailed question. Was he recommending that Hallwright go to jail?

  ‘I’d need to think about it. It was a year ago. Over a year ago. I’ve got to go, okay?’

  The solicitor-general’s office refused to appeal the sentence. Crown Law spokesperson Jan Fulstow told The National Business Review that the sentence wasn’t ‘manifestly inadequate’. She said, ‘We can’t take appeals to the Court to Appeal that we know we shouldn’t be taking. It’s just wasting the court’s time.’

  6

  Hallwright, foolishly, hoped that the judge’s comments might help save his skin at Forsyth Barr. Neave had expressed dismay that the conviction could lead to Hallwright’s termination. But the train had a
lready left the station. He was let go when the company’s managing director handed him an A4 envelope.

  It gave two reasons. Forsyth Barr argued that Hallwright had committed ‘serious misconduct’. It also insisted that his crime had brought the company into disrepute. But the firm didn’t offer much proof at the Employment Court.

  Asked to quantify what losses they might have suffered as a result of the scandal, Paviour-Smith gabbled, ‘You don’t know what you don’t know.’

  He sat on one side of the court; Hallwright and his wife, Juliet, on the other. They didn’t make eye contact. Paviour-Smith gritted his teeth at having to confront him at all. ‘This is just the latest chapter,’ he said, exasperated, in cross-examination. ‘He always blames others, and never accepts responsibility.’

  Before her husband’s termination, Juliet Hallwright wrote emails and left phone messages dumping on Paviour-Smith — he was ‘slippery’, ‘a pompous twat’, etc. In court, she wailed, ‘I’m sorry, Neil!’ It was a horrible, pained cry, but Paviour-Smith folded his arms, and turned his head. He’d plainly had it up to here with the pathetic Hallwrights.

  Paviour-Smith fell apart in cross-examination. He talked too much, gulped, gasped for breath. In one exchange, he tried to dignify emails sent to Forsyth Barr by ‘nutters’, as Hallwright’s employment lawyer, Harry Waalkens, called them.

  The emails were sent after Hallwright was found guilty.

  ‘Some of them were . . . uh . . . blatantly inappropriate,’ Paviour-Smith stumbled.

  Waalkens: ‘There’s no need to be guarded. They’re plainly from nutters.’

  Paviour-Smith: ‘I . . . um . . . I think that . . . These emails are indicative of a depth of feeling in the wider public domain.’

  Sample email, from someone called Terry: ‘serves you right you talentless loser. what are you going to do? run me over? Bwahahahaha. kill yourself you moron.’

  Other emails were read out in court. They all had the familiar, bitter tone of Stuff Comments, of trolls, of nutters. Lame of Forsyth Barr to grasp at such straws; lame, also, to call on the services of Bill Ralston, who brought the gobbledegook of media strategies to the courtroom.

  The hearing opened with Waalkens objecting to Ralston appearing as a witness: ‘How is this ever going to help you determine?’ he shouted at Judge Inglis, who had a heavy cold, and held her head in her hands. Churchman dropped his voice and spoke to her soothingly. ‘Mr Rawls-ton,’ he drawled, ‘is an expert in reputation management, Your Honour.’

  They described two Ralstons. Waalkens profiled him as one of the lower forms, a blathering media bullshitter and corporate lackey; Churchman presented the wise and venerable ‘Rawl-ston’ as a lord of the crisis management manor. ‘I accept he is qualified as an expert,’ ruled Inglis, and allowed him to appear.

  But it didn’t make much difference. Ralston began by explaining the principles of a holy paradigm used extensively in crisis management known as CAP, which stands for Concern, Action and Perspective. This wonderful snake oil and hair restorative had worked wonders for many satisfied clients, he said. If only Hallwright had gone to Ralston, instead of wasting his money on Paul Davison QC! ‘He should have stated he was Concerned,’ said Ralston, sadly. ‘If he had demonstrated remorse, if he had apologised and taken responsibility, the media attention would have substantially decreased.’ He spelled out the rest of the advanced theorem of CAP — ‘Hallwright should have taken Action’, and done something or other about ‘Perspective’ — as the court enjoyed a free lesson in mod comms.

  His central message in his prepared statement to the court was that Hallwright had caused Forsyth Barr reputational damage. Back up, said Waalkens. He wanted to know whether Ralston’s statement was an original work, or merely a photocopy of the statement given to the Employment Relations Authority by his close friend and Forsyth Barr director, Tina Symmans.

  ‘You’ve lifted great parts of Tina’s own statement,’ he said.

  ‘Some parts,’ said Ralston.

  ‘You’ve lifted whole paragraphs word for word. They are identical.’

  ‘Yes, they mostly are,’ said Ralston.

  ‘No, they’re not “mostly”, they’re identical.’

  ‘Some of it,’ said Ralston, ‘is because I’ve agreed with it.’

  ‘It’d be plagiarism if it were journalism.’

  ‘It would be if it were,’ said Ralston.

  ‘Do you think courts are less rigorous than journalism?’

  ‘No,’ said Ralston.

  ‘You’re not impartial at all, are you? You’re plagiarising the work of your friend Tina.’

  ‘Well,’ said Ralston, ‘there was a lot of material I didn’t use . . .’

  Judge Inglis, in her ruling, made only passing reference to Ralston. She wrote, ‘In the final analysis I did not gain much assistance from his evidence.’

  Her 35-page report found against Hallwright. It concluded that the firm had suffered reputational damage, and that Hallwright’s dismissal was justifiable. It was impossible that he could have stayed on after his criminal conviction. Hallwright had blustered that it didn’t impair his ability to do his job. It was as though he were asking, what’s driving over an angry Korean got to do with investment advice? But there was another, stronger question at stake. Who would want to do business with someone who drove over an angry Korean? Hallwright wore that cloth of shame: a scarlet letter.

  7

  After everything — the botched getaway on Mt Eden Road, the trial, the sacking, the doomed appeals to get his job back — what was left of Guy Hallwright’s life? He estimated he spent about $400,000 on legal fees, but wasn’t poor. He said he lived off interest on his investments. Was he budgeting? He said, ‘I’m not in a position where I have to be that careful.’

  No one had offered work. All he had was spare time. He bicycled about 30 kilometres a day. He repaired a couple of guitars. He listened to music — he was a fan of King Crimson, Small Faces, Them, Gram Parsons, John Mayer, The White Stripes. He read the classics — Anna Karenina, The Great Gatsby (‘which confirms my belief it’s his finest work’), and had taken on Proust. He meditated. The pile in Parnell was sold, and he moved into his sister’s house in Pakuranga.

  Had his life collapsed?

  ‘I’m an optimistic kind of guy. But from the outside you might say that. Yeah. But it’s that old Chinese thing, isn’t it? In every crisis there’s an opportunity. I’m not sure what the opportunity is yet. I live in hope.’

  Juliet’s evidence at Employment Court was revealing of his psychological state. She talked of someone who was ‘short-tempered’, ‘shattered’, receiving counselling, ‘falling apart’. She, too, was broken. Her pretty face hinted at someone who had once been animated and vivacious. But now she breathed hard, and wept. She said, ‘Guy pops off into his study and doesn’t tell me what he’s done all day, and I don’t question him about it.’

  After Peter Churchman almost reluctantly tore her to shreds in cross-examination, she sat beside her husband, who stroked her arm for a brief second. It was the touch of a stranger. Afterwards, she left alone, and walked across the road to St Patrick’s Cathedral.

  I spoke to her for a minute. She looked as though she was going to cry.

  Hallwright said, ‘There’s long-standing stuff that’s got nothing to do with this. Tensions.’

  Was he happy?

  ‘No. No.’

  Was he depressed?

  ‘I’m pretty knocked about. It’s been a shattering process. There’s been days when it’s been difficult to summon the energy to get out of bed.’

  I’d heard Hallwright described by someone who knew him as a person who didn’t know who or what he was any more.

  ‘Hmm. Someone who probably doesn’t know where he is would be more accurate.’

  Had his life become a tragedy?

  ‘It’s terrible to think of applying a word like that to your own life. But yeah. It probably is tragic. And traumatic. For everyone
involved. I deeply regret what happened to Mr Kim. I could have done better. But I didn’t, so that’s the breaks.

  ‘I also very much regret the effect on the family. It’s put them through a hell of a lot of stress, and that was my fault. And Forsyth Barr, too — we argue about who should have done what, and we find ourselves in court on opposite sides, but I’m sure it’s been a very unhappy thing for them to have to deal with as well. And I regret that. Lots of regrets.’

  What did he have to say to Sung Jin Kim?

  ‘Just . . . I’m sorry about his injuries and I hope he’s recovering from them as well as he can. It was an unfortunate day for both of us. He knows that both of us had a hand in it. I wish him well.’ It was said in such a dead voice.

  Tina Symmans, in her statement to the Employment Relations Authority, said her advice to Hallwright would have been for him to visit Kim in hospital, ‘and show real concern’. Kim shouted at me, ‘He must come here and say sorry!’

  That wasn’t going to happen. Perhaps it wasn’t lack of concern so much as some deep and entrenched gormlessness. Hallwright was at once sensitive and dense.

  We talked again about 8 September 2010, when Hallwright and Kim crossed paths. Could he see the scene? ‘Yep. Absolutely. His car screeching to a halt in the middle of the road is etched into my memory.’

  What else?

  ‘His face when he turned to look at me. It was chilling. It was chilling because it was . . . it was menacing in a deadpan, impassive kind of way. I was very apprehensive at that stage that he was involved in some . . . that he was part of something, he was some kind of godfather figure, some kind of mafia. That’s what I thought. It scared the hell out of me. It was a sudden realisation that I had gone into something way too deep.’

  I asked him, ‘Are you a racist?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ he laughed. ‘No. I’ve worked with people of Asian descent. When I go on holiday, I often go to Asia.’