The Human Rights Review Tribunal yesterday resumed a Dunedin hearing arising from claims by a former University of Otago employee that the university withheld information about her.
Psychiatrist Dr Lisa Turner was awarded $8717 in June last year after the Employment Relations Authority ruled she had been unfairly dismissed from her professional practice fellow position at the university's department of psychological medicine.
A review tribunal hearing began in October last year, but was adjourned part-heard after one day for amended statements of claim and reply to be filed, together with amended statements of evidence.
In a decision given last month, the tribunal said the university had relied on a section of the Privacy Act linked to protecting ‘‘professional legal privilege'', in withholding 75 documents from Dr Turner, which she had sought under the Privacy Act.
She was now challenging this decision, and also challenged the withholding of two other documents.
A ‘‘closed bundle'' of the documents in question was filed by the university to the tribunal in February this year, with a closed statement of evidence by health sciences human resources manager Simone McNichol, and the closed submissions of the university in support of the withholding claim.
The tribunal noted that Dr Turner was making three alternative submissions, firstly that the university ‘‘failed to fulfil'' its legal duties under the Privacy Act, in respect of the documents over which it claimed privilege.
It would also be submitted that the university did not give notice of any decision to withhold, and the decision to withhold was also wrong.
The tribunal decided it would be ‘‘both premature and unwise'' to determine the privilege issue before hearing the whole case.
University human resources director Kevin Seales told the tribunal yesterday that the university took seriously its responsibility to comply with privacy requirements and went to considerable lengths to do so.
Despite its sizeable staff complement, Otago University ‘‘very rarely'' experienced any difficulties over the Privacy Act.
It was ‘‘completely untrue'' that the university had deliberately withheld any information that should have been provided to Dr Turner, Mr Seales said.
Any claimed non-disclosure of information to Dr Turner had no bearing on her dismissal.
Mr Seales said the university had never sought to cast doubt on Dr Turner's motives in seeking information the university held about her, but some of her requests had been very wide-ranging as well as ‘‘vague and unspecific'' and ‘‘confusing''.
It had also been suggested that the university should take a full record of what was said at every meeting but it was ‘‘not feasible'' for such organisations to do so in all cases.
The university and its staff had more than 20,000 active email accounts, and he knew of one account that held 50,000 emails.
This made it ‘‘impossible for the university to be 100% confident'' that it had checked all the potential information that could be held about a specific staff member.
Yesterday's hearing was before tribunal chairman Rodger Haines QC and members Gillian Goodwin and Deborah Hart.
Andrew Beck and Warren Forster appeared for the plaintiff, Dr Turner, with Barry Dorking and Malcolm Couling appearing for the university.
The hearing resumes today and is set down for four days.
