Chapter 27 - Court

Feb 2000

In order to beat the rap my parents were able to pay for excellent legal counsel. Although they would pay for the lawyers and barrister no one from my family would come to court with me, I faced my fate alone.

I was able to retain a barrister by the name of Bob Brewer the best DUI barrister in Queensland no less. He had defended Jeff’s dad (my mate from uni) on DUI and now they were good mates. With this reference I was introduced to Bob.

Jeff’s Dad was Croatian, and he had be-friended

Vladko was a very friendly bloke he had come here during the fifties working on the Snowy River Scheme, but he still spoke with a heavy accent.

Mr Brewer represented one Dave Groehl of the Foo Fighters (special guest star now 65 yrs old) and Nirvana fame. While at the Big Day out, Dave had decided to ride a scooter from the concert to a local pub. However, en route he was pulled over by Police and charged with drink driving.

This story appeared in the local paper.

January 23, 2000 Dave Grohl over the limit
Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl was arrested for drink-driving on the Gold Coast when his moped was pulled over at a checkpoint after his Big Day Out gig. "I told them I could just walk to the hotel," Grohl told interviewers, "but they said, ‘Sorry, mate, gonna have to put you in the watch-house tonight.’ "

Dave Grohl: The Nirvana/Foo Fighters guru copped a fine and no conviction in the Gold Coast court last year, for being drunk on a rented motor scooter. Our spy reckons he might have blown .15%.

He signed a few autographs and as he waited for his limo.

We walked into court and I felt important. I had my Solicitor and Barrister with me. Everyone in the court seemed to know Bob. The prosecutor, the judge and several other people came up to him and said hi.

I knew I was going to get off. Without Bob I knew that I would be destined for prison. This was the fear that had been going through my mind. I was truly terrified of the idea.

The two Dave’s both caught DUI and both saved by the same Brewer.

Kim Tard was a loan shark to the poor, the desperate and the addicted. His business was called Shark Money Services. I knew him from the gym but the Gold Coast is a small world and it wasn’t long before I made a connection. Every time I saw him at the gym he was driving a different luxury vehicle. Porsches, Ferraris, and Harleys.

On more than one occasion I had heard Tard discussing his business.

“I don’t give a fuck, what their problem is, if they don’t fucking pay they can expect a fuckin visit.” For visit read bashing.

“Yeah we had to do an acid job on the bitch, she wasn’t fucking paying so what do you expect.”

I asked him to give me a spot one day when I was training he glared at me but agreed to assist. I never asked him again.

Ralph had mentioned that he had taken out a loan from a bodybuilder and I was always keen to raise some cash, and so wanted to use his services. However, Ralph never gave me the contact details, and I later worked out why. You see if you introduced anyone to Tard you became partially liable if anything went wrong with the loan.

While I was waiting outside the court I saw Kim Tard swagger in with his legal team. I wondered why he was in court today. I followed him into the small crowded court room and found one of the few remaining seats.

Tard was 120 kgs of solid steroid driven muscle and was about 6’ 2”. Kim was also known as BA, for battery acid, because this is what he threw in face of people who didn’t pay up. That was after he had bashed the shit out em of course.

Kim was taken to court by a one of his customers a junkie by the name of Flowing River. Kim had roughed up Flowing a bit when he failed to come good on an instalment. The court was told that Kim sprayed an “alkaline chemical like ammonia in both his eyes, leaving him permanently blind in his right eye”.

Flowing came to court with an eye patch and arm in a sling.

But Kim had a great legal team. Tard denied ever loaning him money and there were no records to back it up. Tard’s barrister said that, “The prosecution case relied on these two witnesses who were terribly unreliable and had a very long history of heroin addiction”. Tard got off and outside court he thanked the judge and jury for restoring his faith in the judicial system. What a load of crap this bloke was as guilty as sin, he just had the money to make him right. Later I saw him in the Chris Nyst movie “Getting Square”, standing in the pool with Joe Bugner as one of the bodyguards.