I have just returned from a certified fraud examiners conference in Melbourne, one of the topics was that of ethics another very interesting one was on the foreign corrupt practices Act.
Both of these are issues which relate to the dealings I have had with an American national Terry Hay who has been charged with offences and sought refuge in Honolulu.
The FPCA does not only implicate him it also implicates the director of PACIFIC RIM INVESTMENTS LIMITED William Donald DRAKE 43-006 Nana Place, Honolulu. We will be making a complaint under the provisions of that act and will keep you posted as to the outcome.
Basically it all comes down to ethics.. The ethics or lack of, of one person, when condoned by management of a company ,reflects the ethical values of the whole company and when a company’s standards are condoned by organisations they are members of it also reflects on the entire organisation .
It is therefore a very good ethical bench mark to look at companies and organisations in terms of what conduct is condoned.
This is a picture of Peter Spring LL.B his associated partners at Keegan Alexander are
Keegan Alexander is a member of the world wide MSI global alliance . MSI does not appear to have a code of conduct which embraces ethical values outside their organisation but will be sure to raise that with them when we bring this matter to their attention.
Background
For the past four years peter spring has pursued me through he courts on behalf of his client Terry Hay on a number of claims. The purpose of these claims were initially to remove me from attempting to prove that a liquidator a director were fictitious.
The circumstances were that Hay was the owner of a company fresh prepared Limited which he had placed Lynne Pryor in control of as director and shareholder
The company took legal action against a former director Steven DE JONG
The court action is reported in the following judgements
[1] FRESH PREPARED LIMITED V STEVEN DE JONG AND ANOR HC AK CIV 2004-404-1264 20 February 2006
[2] FRESH PREPARED LIMITED V STEVEN DE JONG AND ANOR HC AK CIV 2004-404-001264 13 April 2006
[3] FRESH PREPARED LTD V DE JONG & ANOR HC AK CIV-2004-404-1264 15 May 2006
[4] FRESH PREPARED LTD V DE JONG HC AK CIV-2004-404-1264 9 June 2006
[5] FRESH PREPARED LTD V DE JONG AND ANOR HC AK CIV-2004-404-1264 16 August 2006
[6] DE JONG V FRESH PREPARED LTD HC AK CIV 2006-404-5306 3 November 2006
Perhaps the most significant of these is [5] where on page 2 the judge states “in my provisional view this is one of those unusual cases where the successful party should not be awarded costs, and that they should lie where they fall.”
His honour also refers to The unnecessary use of interlocutory procedures, and the failure to properly assess the true value of its claim well before trial. Stating that a realistic appraisal would have shown that this litigation was an uneconomic exercise for all parties; at the very least it should have been pursued on a restricted basis in the District Court.
He states at point 3
[4] This proceeding was issued in March 2004 and has seen an extraordinary amount of interlocutory activity, predominantly of FPL’s making, which would have been avoided if the company had undertaken an early evaluation of the arguable legal issues and its prospects of success.FPL has apparently pursued a scorched earth policy, forcing all parties to incur legal costs on interlocutories far in excess of what, by any objective measure, was the very modest amount of its claim, which was well within the District Court’s jurisdiction. It was not until the company instructed Messrs Clayton Luke and Richard Harrison less than one month before trial that its case was properly formulated. I shall return to this subject when discussing costs.
Fresh prepared Limited ( FPL) then failed to pay the lawyers who had represented them in the final proceedings ( they took over from SPRING)
Liquidation proceedings were commenced and the company was sold by Lynne Pryor to Sanjay Patel who on the eve of the liquidation proceedings placed the company in voluntary liquidation with Bahubhai Patel
I was asked to locate the locate a director and liquidator Pacific flight catering blog for full details
Neither the liquidator nor director existed both having been fabricated .see Charges over alleged fake liquidator and Boss invents accountant to escape $60k debt
During this time Terry Hay saw it fit to harass me by placing advertisements in a Chinese newspaper mandarin times and joined himself in harassment proceedings which had been initiated by Lynne Pryor against me.
The claim of harassment came when I tried to contact Sanjay Patel and did the usual of phoning the company and calling on his residential address and continually finding Lynne Pryor there and discovering that She had the same Po box number as the liquidator.
The interesting thing was that I had never met, spoken to or investigated Hay yet Peter Spring LL.B laid a charge of harassment against me on behalf of Hay and Pryor and secured a restraining order on fiction.
When the ministry of economic developments investigated , Hay and Pryor were charged . Hay skipped the country and took up residence in his native USA.
Pryor pleaded guilty to fraudulently running a business but not before taking further action against me for alleged contempt of court.
Not only did they take me through district court but also through to the high court despite the court stating that it did not believe that there was a contempt. This is reflected in the judgement PRIOR AND ANOR V HADEN HC AK CIV-2008-404-008134 20 May 2009 “
“The Judge went on to express cautionary views as to whether the undertaking the contempt proceedings relied on was still in force at the time of the alleged breach and raised whether the District Court had jurisdiction to make a finding of civil contempt. He invited counsel to consider the matter further.
Despite the opinions of judges Spring continued to pursue me through the court causing great stress to me and my family contributing to the end of my 24 year marriage.
Spring had obligations under the lawyers and conveyancers act but never ensured that the facts were there to substantiate the claims made .
I made a complaint to the law society based on the conduct of Spring in my case and the observations made by judges in the previous reported matters which reflected the same excessive use of interlocutory measures and scorched earth approach .
My complaint to the law society they have never investigated. They simply wrote to me and told me that I had other redress available to me. Strangely enough that letter was not received by me until after the appeal period.
I have since then asked Spring as to what was happening with the current proceedings, where I won the interlocutory at the high court and they now have to provide discovery to progress the case.
So far the proceedings have cost me $49,000 in court action and I sought to have this sum recovered and I wrote to him. Spring carefully twisted my letter to be an allegation against his company but most importantly stated on 2 November 2010
“As to the court proceedings itself, we are not in receipt of instructions in relation to the same from our clients at present”
I replied and asked him to contact his clients with regards to the proceedings and on the 4th November I received this reply
““We cannot put the same before them as we are no longer acting for them in this matter and have not for some time.”
I can only assume that two days is a long time in law . But to me it shows a certain lack of integrity ethics and accountability to the truth , had the clients ceased being clients would he not have said so two days earlier and ist it a proper procedure to withdraw from the case in court?
I don’t know what others think but in my opinion it is dirty pool and any one being a partner of Keegan Alexander who support this are all tarred with the same brush.
I just hope that the multinational organisation which Keegan Alexander are associated with do have a policy for ethics .
I will forward this post to MSI global alliance and see what their view is on lawyers supporting corrupt practices and taking court action to help conceal corruption and then coming up with mind challenging statements as to their involvement with clients.
Will keep you posted.
In the mean time I am contacting all those who have had the misfortune to have had Peter Spring on the opposition team in court, I have already met with a few of you please do let me know who you are and we can work together to ensure that Lawyers are accountable to the code of conduct.
Grace Haden grace@verisure.co.nz
Further related posts are at
- Pacific Flight Catering what are its ethical values?
- shareholders PACIFIC RIM INVESTMENTS LIMITED
- Lawrence Nathan or is that David Lawrence Nathan
- Alan PFLUEGER the shareholder whose home address is an abandoned car lot
- Does IRD care that dead people are shareholders of pacific flight catering
- should share holders expect accuracy from their directors?
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