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A senior New Zealand lawyer has been fined thousands of dollars after being convicted of two serious driving offences committed just weeks apart.
David Fordyce, a senior solicitor, appeared before the New Zealand Lawyers and Conveyancers Disciplinary Tribunal last month after being convicted of two serious driving offences.
The disciplinary hearing follows Fordyce’s guilty pleas in the District Court for driving with excess breath alcohol and, just three weeks later, driving while on a suspended licence.
The Canterbury-Westland Standards Committee charged him with alternative disciplinary offences, the most serious being misconduct, on the basis that the convictions “tend to bring his profession into disrepute”.
Although Fordyce had already been sentenced in the District Court, the tribunal stated that it was “no surprise” there was “no real risk of actual imprisonment”, nor was it surprising that he had “subsequently been issued with another practising certificate”.
The hearing also revealed that, several months before the convictions, Fordyce, who is currently employed by the Ministry for Primary Industries, failed to stop when signalled by police.
According to the tribunal, he turned into his driveway, told the attending officer he “had not understood he had been asked to stop,” and proceeded to walk away.
The standards committee confirmed that Fordyce was later charged with failing to stop and subsequently pleaded guilty to the offence.
In assessing whether the conduct amounted to misconduct or the lesser charge of unsatisfactory conduct, the standards committee pointed to the close proximity between Fordyce’s conviction of driving with excess breath alcohol and his subsequent “flagrant disobedience” of the suspension just weeks later.
“Mr Fordyce cannot escape the finding that he had chosen to disobey a lawful restriction on driving,” the standards committee noted.
Fordyce’s counsel submitted that the offences represented a temporary lapse in judgment, rather than a broader pattern of disregard for the law, and argued that the conviction did not bring the legal profession into disrepute.
However, the tribunal ultimately determined that the conduct constituted misconduct, observing that had Fordyce been convicted of a single drink-driving offence, “it could be argued that the public might simply view it as a mistake”.
As a result, the tribunal ordered that Fordyce be formally censured and imposed a fine of $3,000.
He was also directed to pay $6,973.07 in legal costs, as well as $2,157 to reimburse the New Zealand Law Society for tribunal-related expenses.
