Auckland
businessman and former firefighter, Graeme John Kendall, was sentenced to home
detention for perjury after giving false evidence in what was described as a
deliberate mis-use of the legal system to inflict considerable harm on his
former wife.
The High Court was
told that Kendall lived for twelve months in a de facto relationship before
marrying his de facto partner in March 2006.
The marriage was at an end within nine months.
Prior to the marriage,
his de facto partner decided to buy a residential unit in Takapuna which
adjoined a unit she already owned. He
suggested she use one of his many private companies for the purchase. All the shares in Home Pride Ltd were transferred
into her name and this company purchased the unit. She was assured, as was her solicitor, that
Home Pride was a “clean company”: a shell company with no assets and no
liabilities.
Within months of the
marriage ending, she received a statutory demand claiming that Home Pride owed
$64,400 for rent due on a storage unit in Rosebank Road, Avondale. This was a storage unit where some of her
personal property had been stored previously.
If payment was not made it was likely that Home Pride would be wound up
by the court and the Takapuna residential unit sold to pay the claimed debt.
She spent $33,000 in
legal fees disputing the debt; a debt claimed by one of her former husband’s
companies.
It was proved that
Kendall had fabricated lease documents to make it appear that Home Pride owed
rent for the storage unit. He was
convicted of perjury. He served three
months imprisonment before being convicted again on the same charge following a
retrial. Justice Toogood took this
earlier period of imprisonment into account when sentencing him to seven
month’s home detention for perjury. Kendall was also ordered to pay $25,000 to his
former wife.
R.
v. Kendall – High Court (11.12.12)
12.034