Christchurch man Liam Ward has had years of stress and anxiety over crimes and debts that aren’t his. But could he be due for compensation? Lawyer and personal data expert Kathryn Dalziel believes it’s his due.
“If I can’t prove it’s not me I could end up in jail” – Watch this story on TVNZ+
Liam Ward has been hounded by police and debt collectors for over a decade due to a mix-up of personal data.
He was one of several people who complained to Fair Go about a troublesome name double, in response to our story about Shane William Pritchard who has been pursued for 30 years for a range of offences committed by a man who shares his name.
Now a lawyer and specialist in personal data says there may be a way for the innocent parties in these mix-ups to claim compensation.
There are at least seven Liam Wards in New Zealand, according to the electoral roll and other sources. The Liam Ward who approached Fair Go lives in Christchurch and has spent his life doing good things for others. He supports people with disabilities, volunteers for charities and is about to head to the US for three months to work at a summer camp for disabled children.
This same Liam Ward has been wrongly accused of drink-driving, tampering with cars and driving while disqualified, and more recently has been chased by debt collectors for unpaid fines he never racked up. The admin hassles and anxiety have plagued his life for more than a decade.
A Christchurch man is still trying to clear his name. A lawyer says he could have a case for compensation. (Source: Fair Go)
Like Shane Pritchard, Ward says the continual need to defend himself and clear his name of offences he hasn’t committed has at times had a negative effect on his mental wellbeing. “It’s had quite a profound impact on my life,” he says. “It’s definitely caused me to have ongoing anxiety.
“I’m a good citizen, so being treated like a criminal came as a shock to me.”
Lawyer Dalziel says everyone is at risk of a personal data breach but there’s no excuse for it happening repeatedly to one person over such a prolonged period of time. She accepts that name double-ups are a part of life but says IT systems in New Zealand are perfectly good enough to cope with any confusion.
In Ward’s case, one of his name doubles shared his first and last name and his exact date of birth, but had a different middle name. That might seem enough to distinguish between the two, but mistakes were made by the police, the courts, NZTA and credit rating agencies.
Liam was first aware of a problem when he applied to university and had to double-check his criminal record after it was initially confused with that of another Liam Ward.
Then he was told he couldn’t sit his full driving test. A call to the courts revealed a long list of driving convictions on his own file. He went to the police but felt they didn’t take it seriously. “The woman I spoke to at the station laughed at me.” He was 17 at the time. It took two months of going between the courts, the police and the AA to establish that his own record was clean. He took the test and passed.
He faced similar problems when trying to get a new job. Plus an order to complete 60 hours of community service or face a fine or imprisonnment. “I felt sick to my stomach, he says. “What if I couldn’t prove it wasn’t me?”
Again he felt no one was listening to him or acting on his problem.
So back in 2015 he went to Fair Go for the first time. The police fronted on camera and said they’d ensure a flag was put against his name to stop any further confusion. It did the trick. But then came years of credit rating problems and being chased for debts he had nothing to do with.
The problems involved all three of New Zealand’s credit ratings agencies: Illion, Centrix and Equifax.
Ward says he could understand mistakes being made once. But he diligently tried to work with the agencies to correct his information. He was told “prevent merge flags” would be put on his file to end the data confusion. But the problem continued.
He says Illion was unresponsive. We put questions to them too, but similarly had no response. In contrast, Centrix and Equifax did engage with Ward. There was some confusion about what happened, but after persisting both agencies told Ward that there was a financial problem with a Liam Ward who had no current record, so it seems the data had been added to Ward’s file. Centrix and Equifax confirmed this to Fair Go and also confirmed they couldn’t promise the issue wouldn’t reoccur in future.
And it did happen again, just last week. Ward was told he owed $1000 because of an unpaid Genesis Energy bill. He’s never been a customer of Genesis Energy.
Dalziel says there’s no excuse for this. “These agencies are not taking reasonable steps to check for accuracy before they use Liam’s personal information. In my view, this is a breach of principle eight of the Privacy Act.”
She suggests Ward put in a complaint to the office of the Privacy Commissioner because in her view the repeated mistakes made when an error is known amounts to acting in bad faith. If he can show that the mistakes are causing him harm then he should have a case against the agencies.
The ongoing anxiety and disruption to Ward’s life is a form of harm. With his upcoming trip to the US to work at a camp for children with disabilities, he’s anxious an incorrect list of offences and debts will mean he’s detained at the border.
He plans to ask the police for a letter stating his innocence, but even with that, he isn’t fully confident. “I have quite minimal faith in the guarantees that they’ve given me so far.”
Dalziel believes these types of problems can be avoided by agencies creating their own unique personal identifiers for people, especially in cases where a mix-up has been noted, rather than relying on names and dates of birth.
However, Centrix told Fair Go it does have unique identifiers within its agency. It says the problem is that New Zealand doesn’t have a universal unique identifier that can be shared between organisations, so that’s when mix-ups occur. It adds that the number of incorrect matches is reducing year on year. In the last recorded year, of 180,070 requests for credit checks, only 273 were found to be incorrect matches.
Dalziel thinks that’s still too high, and believes more needs to be done to stop the problem.
“If I can’t prove it’s not me I could end up in jail” – Watch this story on TVNZ+
