Why we need a register of name supression orders

Bevan Hurley in the HoS reports:

Barry Hart was rebuked by Judge Charles Blackie in Manukau District Court on Wednesday for telling the Herald on Sunday that the name of a man charged over a cocaine smuggling ring had been suppressed.

Hart told the court the incident had been a misunderstanding and he had been acting in the best interests of his client.

Surely this is a disciplinary matter? Or does the Law Society not have a problem with a lawyer inventing fake supression orders and lying to the media?

In January a group was charged in connection with the importation of 3kg or $500,000 worth of the Class A drug. The paper approached Hart’s client on a Friday and later checked with the court to ensure he did not have name suppression. The next day, Hart called and said his client had interim name suppression after an appeal at Manukau District Court.

In fact, Hart filed an appeal the day after the report was published – with the name removed. He lost, but after an unsuccessful appeal to the High Court, the full case for suppression was heard at the district court this week.

This appears to be an absolutely blatant lie. And worse, it has suceeded. If there was a register of supression orders, then the Herald on Sunday would have known Hart was laying, and could have legally published the name of his client.

This also reinforces the need for blogs to have the ability to easily check if a supression order exists. Under a proposed law change, we will face criminal liability for not removing the name of someone with name suppression, if we have been alerted to it. Now this would allow lawyers such as Mr Hart to tell a blog owner that the name of their client is suppressed and must be removed, and the blog owner will feel obliged to comply, even if the lawyer is lying.

The proposed law should be amended so that a blog owner only has to remove a name, if the request comes from an official source such as Ministry of Justice or Crown Law.

This article shows that defence lawyers can not be trusted to be truthful about whether their client has name suppression. If this is unfair to all the other defence lawyers out there, I’ll retract it once I read that some of Mr Hart’s colleagues have filed a disciplinary complaint against him.