Lost

A reputation for a thousand years may depend upon the conduct of a single moment

Honestly Lay Bare thought that it had seen it all.

We have spied the fraudsters.

Laughed at the con men.

Avoided the corporate thugs.

Never though have we ever seen a case study of reputation lost of this magnitude.

This is the story of a $77 speeding fine.

**

Marcus Richard Einfeld was born on 22 September 1938.

Einfeld is a former Justice of the Federal Court of Australia and of the Supreme Courts of New South Wales, Western Australia and the Australian Capital Territory.

He was President of the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission between 1986 and 1990. He retired as a judge in April 2001.

He was named by the National Trust of Australia as a National Living Treasure.

He is - as of Monday this week - the first Australian former superior court judge to be sentenced to jail.

To understand how it all came to this one needs to go back to a warm summer Sydney day in early 2006.

The events that follow can be broken into what loosely might be described as Plan A and Plan B, which the Crown in the subsequent trial characterised as "cunning, elaborate and premeditated".

Plan A was to protect Einfeld from a speeding offence committed on January 8, 2006.

Einfeld made a false statutory declaration after receiving the speeding penalty notice - he knew that he was the driver of his car when he nominated Professor Teresa Brennan as the person "in control" of the vehicle.

Further, he knew when he elected to have the matter heard by the Local Court that he was the driver of the car. He knew he was lying when, to the written notice of pleading, he attached a letter addressed to the presiding magistrate. It said: "My plea of not guilty is because I was not the driver of the car at the time and place stated … I am happy to come to court on a convenient day to swear to these facts if required."

On August 7, 2006 he gave sworn evidence before a magistrate, Ian Barnett.

He used his status as a "justice" when he perjured himself, saying he had left Sydney on January 6, 2006 and went to Forster; that he had lent his car to an old friend, Professor Brennan; that he was not driving his vehicle on January 8, 2006; and he did not know Macpherson Street, Mosman, the place where the offence took place.

The magistrate dismissed the charge against Einfeld.

After the hearing, journalists from The Daily Telegraph discovered that Professor Brennan had died in a car accident in Florida on February 3, 2003.

Questioned by a journalist, Viva Goldner, about this, the former judge said that he knew two Teresa Brennans, both were professors, both were Australians and both had died in motor accidents in the United States. The one he was referring to in court earlier that day was not the one who died in 2003.

He pressed on.

Two days later he told Australian television news: "I categorically deny that I was the driver of my car on January 8, 2006 in Mosman. On January 8 I was out of Sydney … I again unequivocally and categorically deny any suggestion of wrongdoing on my part."

A day later - August 10, 2006 - the police began investigating whether Einfeld had committed perjury.

Time for Plan B. This plan was doubly complicated. He sought not only to extricate himself from the speeding fine but also from perjury.

To this end his barrister, Winston Terracini, SC, handed the police four signed statements, including one from Einfeld, one from his mother, Rosa Einfeld, 94, and one from a former journalist, Vivian Schenker.

The story had shifted again, significantly.

There was no mention of being in Forster. Instead there was an elaborate scenario about how he had lent his car to Brennan, that his girlfriend Sylvia Eisman was taking his mother to see a play called Menopause, that he "suddenly remembered" he had an arrangement to meet Schenker for lunch at Pilu restaurant in Freshwater.

He borrowed his mother's car for this expedition. In her original statement to the police, Schenker falsely stated that she was in Mrs Rosa Einfeld's car on the lunch trip.

Both Plan A and Plan B were sheer and utter concoctions, as he admitted on October 31 last year, when he entered a plea of guilty to the allegations of perjury and perverting the course of justice.

The Crown said in its sentencing submission: "In his endeavour to escape his criminality he struck at the very heart of all aspects of the justice system and the administration of the law." He did so using his standing as a "justice" in giving his perjured evidence.

**

Honestly Lay Bare can't shake the fact that Einfeld lost his reputation as one of Australia's leading jurists over a speeding fine.

Equally though - as is our want - Honestly Lay Bare has drawn a lesson from this saga that we are confident will stand the test of time.

There will always be someone that is willing to test the system - whether it be the judicial system of the country or the internal control mechanisms of an organisation.

That person may be the most junior person in the organisation or the most senior person.

In the end it all comes down to character.

Character knows no rank.

Reputational damage knows no limits.

Just ask Marcus Einfeld.

Post based on "Einfeld Drove his Fate and Reputation over a Cliff" by Richard Ackland - Sydney Morning Herald - 20th March 2009. Suggestion for post from Todd.