Judgment against Parkinson company

By Deborah Hill Cone

Friday 22nd November 2002

TVNZ's new programming consultant Tom Parkinson's past has come back to haunt him with a new High Court judgment finding against him.

The case was taken by finance company Elders Pastoral Holdings over the 1997 lease of an Auckland television studio building by Isambard Holdings, Mr Parkinson's failed production company.

This month, Master Graham Lang granted summary judgment against Mr Parkinson for a total of $52,000 for part of the claim relating to a single month's rent of the building.

Earlier Master Lang had entered summary judgment against Mr Parkinson for $211,000 for rent and other expenses over the same dispute.

Mr Parkinson had been guarantor for the lease on the building at Asquith business park in West Auckland.

Isambard subleased the building, owned by Wanaka property developer Hedley O'Meara, to Pacific Renaissance Pictures, the maker of US TV shows Xena and Hercules.

The court scrap was a complex lease issue involving Elders, Mr Parkinson, Pacific Renaissance and Mr O'Meara's company Asquith Investments.

Master Lang found Mr Parkinson was liable for outstanding rent.

Last month Mr Parkinson was poised to be appointed to the newly created top-level position as director of programming for TVNZ when controversy over his business past saw him withdraw his application. Instead Mr Parkinson, who had left his job as head of special projects at Melbourne drama producer Crawford Productions, was hired as a consultant to TVNZ.

Isambard was wound up in 1998 after defaulting on loan payments, owing more than $1.7 million. Mr Parkinson ran TVNZ's entertainment department in the early 1980s and then joined the consortium that set up TV3.

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