MARTIN LEE SEGLER

Findings — machine-extracted (anthropic-batch:claude-opus-4-8); verify against the decision

Martin Lee Segler, a legal practitioner acting in his personal capacity in a residential tenancy dispute, wrote a letter on his professional letterhead to the landlord's agent demanding payment of a judgment before it was due and threatening to personally refer the landlord to the DPP for perjury. The Tribunal found the unjustified enforcement threat and the baseless threat of criminal perjury proceedings (found to be intended only to cause distress) amounted to unprofessional conduct. No express finding of dishonesty was made. He was reprimanded, fined $2,500 and ordered to pay $4,500 costs.

Duties found breached:

• Disclose adverse law to the court
• No baseless or threatened misconduct report

Aggravating factors:

• Threat made on professional letterhead to gain personal advantage
• Threat of criminal proceedings made solely to cause anxiety/distress to Mr Dortch
• Lack of insight; continued attempts to justify conduct through proceedings and penalty submissions
• Prior disciplinary history - found guilty of unprofessional conduct on two prior occasions (2001 and 2003) covering six matters
• Over 28 years in practice, principally practising criminal law, should have known no reasonable prospect of indictment

Mitigating factors:

• No pecuniary loss to Mr Dortch
• No evidence Mr Dortch actually suffered distress
• Practitioner and wife were the aggrieved parties who were successful in the underlying proceedings
• Assurance that he would not engage in similar conduct again