Andrew Grimson: Gold Coast chef who was jailed for punching hotel housekeeper loses his appeal

A Gold Coast chef who assaulted a housekeeper at the Surfers Paradise hotel where he was living has lost his appeal against his conviction. Here’s why the judges found it to be a hopeless case.

Gold Coast chef Andrew Robert Grimson, formerly of Mermaid Waters. Picture: Facebook

A Gold Coast chef who assaulted a housekeeper at the hotel where he was living – over fears his victim was helping to steal cash and cannabis from him – has lost his appeal against his conviction.

Andrew Robert Grimson, formerly of Mermaid Waters, was convicted by a jury at the Southport District Court on October 6, 2022, of a charge of assault occasioning bodily harm, which occurred at Meriton Suites Surfers Paradise on September 27, 2021.

He was ordered to serve four-and-a-half months of a nine-month sentence.

He appealed his sentence and conviction to the Queensland Court of Appeal which, on April 1, unanimously dismissed it.

Justice Robert Gotterson, who wrote the leading judgment, said Grimson first met the complainant about 9.15am on the day in question, when the housekeeper knocked on Grimson’s door and asked if service was required, to which Grimson responded it wasn’t.

Meriton Suites Surfers Paradise, where Grimson was temporarily living with his partner when he assaulted a housekeeper on September 27, 2021. Picture: Mohammad Alfares

Per Grimson’s evidence, that same day he had supposedly caught an “almost supermodel-like... caramel-coloured bloke... with long black hair, down to about his shoulders” snooping about his hotel room, and believed this person may have been in cahoots with the housekeeper in stealing money and cannabis from him.

Shortly afterwards, Grimson’s partner, with whom he was co-cohabitating in the hotel room, disappeared and, according to Justice Gotterson, Grimson feared she had been abducted and held for ransom because she is “beautiful” and is “related to famous people”.

At about 3 to 4pm, Grimson found the complainant housekeeper in a storeroom and, after asking him if he’d seen a woman matching his partner’s description, inexplicably punched him in the face, leaving him with a split lip requiring stitches at the hospital.

According to Justice Gotterson, Grimson at trial denied punching the housekeeper and asserted that in fact the complainant had touched him on the face first.

Justice Gotterson said most of the grounds of appeal advanced by Grimson were factual in basis and doomed to fail, but for the possibility that his defence team erred in not advancing self-defence as a possible defence against the assault charge, in light of Grimson’s position the housekeeper had touched him on the face first.

Per Justice Gotterson, Grimson described to the jury the alleged touch to his face as “contact”.

“I’m not saying that he punched me, I’m not saying that he attacked me... he’s not meant to hit me, I don’t think,” Grimson told his trial.

Justice Grimson said, even if he accepted Grimson’s face had been touched by the complainant housekeeper, pursued at its highest it could not amount to a successful self-defence plea, and so the appeal was dismissed.

When contacted by this masthead, Grimson maintained his innocence.

Originally published as Andrew Grimson: Gold Coast chef who was jailed for punching hotel housekeeper loses his appeal