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Summarised by Centrist
Wellington lawyer Stephen Franks has won a review overturning a Law Society disciplinary finding over a letter his firm sent criticising the use of puberty blockers for gender-dysphoric adolescents.
Franks and his firm, Franks Ogilvie, were investigated after sending a three-page letter on behalf of client Inflection Point New Zealand to about 20 healthcare practitioners.
Six complaints were made to the Law Society, although none came from the doctors who received the letter.
The Standards Committee dismissed most allegations but found Franks had failed to use legal processes for a proper purpose. It ruled the letter was intended to pressure clinicians to reconsider providing gender-affirming care and criticised the use of law firm letterhead to lend weight to an implied threat of litigation.
The committee censured Franks and imposed a fine.
But Legal Complaints Review Officer Fraser Goldsmith overturned the ruling.
“The very purpose of a lawyer or firm sending a letter on behalf of a client is, in many if not most instances, to endeavour to lend weight to whatever concern, position or purpose the client seeks to express or advance,” Goldsmith wrote. “That is what lawyers do.”
He added: “This cannot conceivably be improper in principle.”
Goldsmith also defended the right to pressure medical providers through lawful advocacy, “provided the means of doing so are lawful.”
Franks responded by calling the original ruling “stupid” and describing some involved in the disciplinary process as “dimwits”.
Franks said he was glad the committee decision had not been unanimous because it showed “they were not all ‘idiots’”.
He also accused the profession of showing itself “so hostile to basic elements of practice and freedom of speech”.
