A foul mouth was no barrier to success … It may well be now … How a lawyer and a law firm misunderstood their duty as employers … Lord Denning’s secretary verbally abused in Sydney … Nick Bonyhady reports on a different sort of new normal 

There is a moment in the tide of affairs when things change, never to be the same again. The New York Times and New Yorker investigations into Harvey Weinstein’s career of sexual assault and sexual harassment has been a watershed moment – the effect of which is to free women from the fear, constraints and silence that protected powerful and abusive men.  

Today, it would be a tragically unaware male to image it would be acceptable to subject a female employee, in particular, to foul language or harassment. 

It’s been a slow process but we’ve made modest steps in the right direction, thanks to the powerful disinfectant of sunlight. Heavens, we even have same-sex marriage. 

What now seems quite bewildering is the idea that men in senior positions believed that crude behaviour was acceptable and tolerated. 

Take the case of law firm partner Geoffrey Meadows, now a senior member of the NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal, and before that a member of the NSW Consumer, Trader and Tenancy Tribunal since 2009. 

In 2003, in evidence to the NSW Industrial Relations Commission he did not deny that he had called his secretary a “fucking slag” and a “fucking mole”. He said that these were terms that he used “with people I have a strict work or professional relationship with”. 

His version of “strict work, professional” language did not impede his appointment to a quasi-judicial position. 

At least Industrial Commission Deputy President Peter Sams recognised that this was “disgusting … grossly offensive and completely unacceptable”. 

We’re not suggesting that Meadows harassed anyone, or worse, as is the quite different case with allegations against Don Burke. It’s the fact that as a partner at a law firm he thought it was acceptable, in the early noughties, to call a middle-aged female employee, with a distinguished work history, a “fucking slag … a fucking mole”. 

In’s unlikely that he would now be calling people he works with at NCAT “fucking moles and slags”.

His insults came to light after Toni Neal, Meadows’ secretary, applied to the Industrial Relations Commission for compensation for her unfair dismissal from Shaw McDonald, a Sydney law firm to which she had moved with Meadows in 2002. 

Prior to her time at Shaw McDonald, Neal had been a private secretary in the 1970s to Lord Denning and Lord Wilberforce. 

From 1995 she worked for Meadows at a succession of firms in Sydney, and she came to regard him as her “mentor and best friend”. Meadows, conversely, described their relationship as purely professional. 

After moving to Shaw McDonald, Neal gave evidence that her relationship with the firm quickly soured. In January 2003, at a meeting with Meadows and another director of the firm, Neal was made redundant. She was given a payout of $25,000 – just $425 more than the minimum redundancy payment. 

Deputy President Sams found that Neal was not given reasonable notice of her redundancy or presented with an opportunity to explore alternative forms of employment. He described the process as a “classic example of how not to treat employees in redundancy situations”.

Having understandably not pursued reinstatement at Shaw McDonald, Neal was awarded compensation of $19,960, equivalent to 20 weeks wages. 

Meadows’ language did not specifically factor into the compensation, though Deputy President Sams remarked: 

“I was appalled by this evidence. To speak to anyone in such terms, let alone to someone who might be regarded as a friend or colleague, was disgusting. It was grossly offensive and completely unacceptable. Moreover, for such language to be used in the workplace by a partner in a law firm with an industrial relations practice, I found to be almost beyond belief.”