Sex pest lawyer must pay $170k to harassed employee
Lonely divorced lawyer Owen Hughes, 59, said he was a “sleek kangaroo” and similar to Jane Austen’s brooding hero Mr Darcy. Judges said he was reprehensible and mawkish.
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The head of a law firm head who saw himself as one of fiction’s famous romantic characters sexually harassed a female solicitor by bombarding her with emails and sprawling on her bed in his underwear.
Owen Hughes likened himself to “a sleek kangaroo” and novelist Jane Austen’s noble brooder Mr Darcy in Pride and Prejudice.
Hughes took to emailing solicitor Catherine Hill in bad French and bullying her in conduct labelled despicable, reprehensible and mawkish by three judges of the Full Court of the Federal Court.
In what has been seen as victory against sexual harassment, which surveys have found to be rife in the legal profession, Hughes, 59, has lost his appeal against a finding he sexually harassed Ms Hill, 56.
He also lost his appeal against a $170,000 damages payout awarded to his ex-employee which he claimed was manifestly excessive but which the judges said they would have increased had they been asked to do so.
The court said that Ms Hill began working with Hughes’ Bangalow based law firm in May 2015.
In July of that year she and Hughes stayed at his brother’s house when they travelled to Sydney for work.
She returned to her bedroom to find him lying on the bed wearing only his underwear. The next morning he was waiting for her wrapped only in a towel. As he had in the office, he only left if she gave him a hug.
The court rejected Hughes’ argument that mother-of-two Ms Hill had behaved in a “coquettish” fashion in her dress and by wearing perfume and that his intentions had been “honourable”.
Justice Nye Perram was incredulous that Hughes had actually likened his actions to that of Mr Darcy, an aloof romantic hero who was really a good character at heart and who was famously played on screen by heart-throb Colin Firth.
“The facts of this case are about as far from a Jane Austen novel as it is possible to be,” Justice Perram said.
Hughes’ behaviour had made Ms Hill sick, causing considerable stress, anxiety, worry and unhappiness, the court found.
“She has been wronged, badly, by the unlawful actions of her employer. This should never have happened to her,” Justice Perram said. Justice Berna Collier and Justice John Reeves agreed in an unanimous judgment.
The court said that Ms Hill began working with Hughes’ law firm Beesley and Hughes Lawyers after a career in the publication industry in New York and London.
She returned to Australia and studied law, qualifying in April 2015, after she had split up with her husband and decided to find work in northern NSW so her children could be close to their father, who lived in the area.
Two months after she started working for him, Hughes began bombarding her with emails professing his love and seeking a romantic relationship which she clearly rebuffed, the court said.
“(She was) hired as his paralegal, new to the legal profession, unable to move away from the area due to her two children she had to look after and was suffering from an anxiety disorder,” Justice Perram said.
“A decent person would not have exploited this power imbalance. As the events in this case show, and as the trial judge correctly apprehended, (Hughes) is not a decent person.”
Hughes, described as a lonely divorced man, continued to pursue his employee.
“The emails and invitations continued unabated. There is no need to set them out. They are mawkish and altogether inappropriate,” Justice Perram said.
The court upheld the trial judge’s findings that Hughes’ conduct was “despicable” after he used confidential and personal information he had obtained about Ms Hill while representing her in mediation against her husband to blacken her reputation in the sexual assault hearing.
“The conduct of (Hughes) was despicable. It was also in every sense improper,” Justice Perram said.
The court found Hughes had bullied Ms Hill in an email asking for assurance “you will not make a complaint or sue me” followed by “I always fight the good fight btw”.
“It was a threat made by an experienced lawyer to a less experienced employee whose employment options were limited and who, to his knowledge, was suffering from an anxiety disorder,” Justice Perram said.
“To have suffered (Hughes’) sexual harassment in the first instance was psychologically damaging to (Miss Hill). To deal thereafter with his menacing behaviour, as her employer, must have been a terrible experience for a woman in her position.”
The court said Hughes’ legal career should be over.
The Office of the Legal Services Commissioner’s website shows he has been “reprimanded” and he has cancelled his practising certificate.
Ms Hill continues to work as a lawyer in northern NSW.
Originally published as Sex pest lawyer must pay $170k to harassed employee