LEGAL LION IN TROUBLE OVER SPEEDING TICKET

Sydney, Aug 18 NZPA - It only took a Google search to land former Australian Federal Court judge Marcus Einfeld in a pickle.

The prominent lawyer is renowned as a skilled advocate and has been termed by one newspaper as "the unofficial moral watchdog of human rights" in Australia.

In 1997, he was named by the National Trust of Australia as one of the country's 100 Living National Treasures.

Earlier this month, he successfully appealed a speeding fine in court.

Einfeld, who still uses the term Justice despite working as a lawyer, informed the court that he had not been driving his silver Lexus when it was caught by a speed camera in the affluent northern Sydney suburb of Mosman on January 8.

"I lent it to an old friend of mine who was visiting from Florida," he told the magistrate hearing the case.

He said the friend was Professor Teresa Brennan, but added he could provide no further information because she had died in a car accident after returning to the United States.

Sydney's Daily Telegraph was covering Einfeld's case and a sub editor did a Google search on Professor Teresa Brennan.

It revealed that a Professor Teresa Brennan had indeed died in a car accident, but early in 2003 -- three years before Einfeld's alleged speeding offence.

When challenged, Einfeld told the paper it was another woman, also called Professor Brennan, to whom he had loaned his car. She had also died in a car accident.

This seemed to stretch the realms of credibility and created public amazement. Searches for a second Professor Brennan proved fruitless.

Einfeld then read a public statement on television, with only the vaguest reference to whom he had lent the car.

"I again unequivocally and categorically deny any suggestion of wrongdoing on my part," he said.

"As I said in court, I am uncertain as to who was driving the car at the time, but I did authorise an old acquaintance to use it while I was out of town."

Einfeld said he would have paid the fine if he had been driving, because he would not have lost his licence.

"I would not even think of misleading a court. The suggestion that I have done so is immensely hurtful because it contradicts everything that I've always stood for."

His lawyers said that within days they would reveal who was driving, after contacting a person in the United States. But to date this hasn't eventuated.

For a few days, it appeared that police would not interview Einfeld over the apparent discrepancy in his court statement, but New South Wales Police Minister Carl Scully then announced there would be an investigation by the State Crime Command.

NSW Police said today that fraud squad detectives would interview him next week.

Amid the furore, a friend of the late Teresa Brennan said she thought Einfeld's use of the professor's name was "reprehensible"

Florida Atlantic University associate professor Lynn Appleton told The Weekend Australian: "Teresa abhorred hypocrisy and as a social and moral philosopher herself she would have been both outraged and saddened by this kind of action from someone of his stature.

"And, if this Einfeld is someone that Teresa knew or had worked with, it's a more personal betrayal. To use your own knowledge of a tragic death and a family's loss to try to cover your own petty misdeeds -- that is just reprehensible."

The Australian-born Teresa Brennan, philosopher and ethicist, was killed after a hit and run incident in Broward County, Florida, on December 10, 2002. She was crossing the road at the time. Her life support was eventually turned off in early February 2003.

The driver of the vehicle that killed her has not been found and her death is listed as an unsolved crime.

Another friend of Brennan's, Harvard University professor Alice Jardine, said there were suggestions at the time of her death that she had been murdered.

"Teresa had people threatening her at the time she died," Jardine told the newspaper.

Einfeld, 67, had 15 years as a Federal Court judge and was noted for his liberal rulings.

Since he retired from that court, he has been prominent for his work internationally. In 1988 he was made an Officer of the Order of Australia for services to international affairs and in 2002 he was named the United Nations peace laureate.

He is currently chairing an inquiry into the April riots in the Solomon Islands.

But his distinguished career is a crossroads -- all over a $A77 ($NZ93) speeding fine and three traffic demerit points.