Never without an argument
John Tannahill
It was a running joke for a while that senior counsel John Tannahill with his trademark walrus moustache was growing to look more and more like legendary TV lawyer Rumpole of the Bailey.
Old school and sometimes irascible, Tannahill was also a dogged fighter in the courts with his walrus moustache so reminiscent of Rumpole actor Leo McKern.
He studied law at Victoria University after coming from New Plymouth, where he had been born.
Initially, he began an arts degree but quickly switched to law.
‘‘I wanted to do the degree in four years which wasn’t usual then. Then I was failed one paper and had to go back for the fifth year.’’
It was there he met the man he was going to start a law firm with.
Tannahill worked for a couple of firms first and, in an interview recorded shortly before his death, he recalled his first case was about a man unfairly packing cabbages that earned him his first publicity.
In 1963, he began a partnership with lawyer Des Deacon and law firm Deacon and Tannahill was born. He lost the coin toss to have his name go first.
The first year saw them getting to the police station at 7.30am to see lawyer b August 29, 1938, New Plymouth d December 25, 2018, Wellington
those arrested overnight as they built a practice.
‘‘There was no legal aid in those days. We went to see who had money in their pockets,’’ he said.
The pair spent 34 years in practice together.
His well-known cases included a man charged with video piracy, one of the first such cases in New Zealand. It was hard fought for a couple of years, going to a second trial and ending up with guilty verdicts on a reduced number of charges.
Tannahill also liked to cross swords with the Serious Fraud Office.
He made international headlines for defending a man who left his 18-month-old son in the car while he visited a strip club at 3am.
Among his interests was horse racing and he became well known for defending jockeys on charges.
Outside the courtroom, he was the North Island manager for National Premiership winning jockey Chris Johnson.
He also got into trouble both with IRD on tax charges and the SFO for fraud charges ending up being struck off in 2000, when he got two convictions for fraud and was sentenced to four months in jail.
‘‘I was inside for 54 hours, and talked to 17 people who wanted to see a lawyer while I was there,’’ he said.
Tannahill was allowed home detention, which he spent at his home in Horokiwi.
In the first year after his conviction, he applied for ‘‘heaps and heaps’’ of jobs including, cheekily, as assistant to the chief justice but was not called for a single interview.
Instead he forged a new career in the tribunals jurisdiction, acting for bars in liquor licensing cases and where advocates were needed, like the Employment Relations Authority, while picking up a few criminal cases.
He had no trouble giving his opinion and often complained about news articles or radio broadcasts, even winning against Paul Holmes at the Broadcasting Standards Authority after Holmes called Justice Grieg ‘‘old’’ and a ‘‘duffer’’.
By his own words, he was ‘‘stoic, grumpy but fun’’.
Sources: Michael Bott, The Evening Post and The Dominion.