From Wikipedia, a summary below which explains why Marcus Einfeld, an Australian Living National Treasure, has contributed The Einfeld Defence to the Australian legal lexicon. Einfeld Defence: "Someone else was driving the car... or if that person is subsequently found to be dead at the time, someone else of the same name was driving the car... and anyway, I'm a very important and moral person... can't we just like... forget about it?"Allegations regarding making a statement on oath
On January 8, 2006, Einfeld's silver Lexus was caught doing sixty kilometres per hour in a fifty kilometre an hour zone in Mosman, Sydney. The penalty for breaking the speed limit was an $AUD77 fine however Einfeld has a record of speeding tickets and would receive enough demerits for this offence to take him to one short of losing his drivers license. When the case came to court in early August 2006, Einfeld claimed he had been in Forster on January 8, and that he had lent his car to a friend, Professor Teresa Brennan. He also signed a statutory declaration to that effect. It became apparent that this could not have been true as Teresa Brennan, who had been a Professor at Florida Atlantic University had been killed in an unsolved hit and run car accident in January 2003, three and a half years previously [3] [4].
He later attempted to clarify his statement by claiming that he had lent his car to another Professor Teresa Brennan, however, this woman has not yet been traced. He has since said that the driver was actually a person resident in the US and it would be possible "in the next few days to reveal who was the driver". [5] In January 2007 Ms Angela Liati came forward and announced that she had been in Einfeld's car on January 8, 2006 with a Teresa Brennan (not the deceased) but was unsure who was driving at the time of the infringement. [6]
It has been claimed that Einfeld has on three prior occasions avoided traffic notices by claiming that Australian women who lived in the United States had been driving his car at the time. Two of these notices, a speeding fine and traffic light infringement, occurred while Einsfeld was a Federal Court judge and involved a court-supplied car. On each occasion Einfeld made a statutory declaration and avoided any penalty[7]. On two occasions he claimed that Nadine Levick, an Australian academic resident in the United States, was driving his car. Levick denies all knowledge of the traffic offenses[8].
In all, over a four year period, Einfeld incurred nine traffic fines for a range of offenses from speeding to parking illegally. In July 1999 Einfeld's court-supplied Ford Fairlane was picked up by a red light camera at the intersection of William and Crown streets in East Sydney. Einfeld claimed that his car was being serviced in Woolloomooloo although that was shown not to be the case. This fine was waived after Einfeld produced a statutory declaration the contents of which, along with four other documents relating to the case, remain suppressed by the Court. In 2003 the Court attempted to enforce an outstanding parking fine from 1998. After it did so, Einfeld claimed that he had been disabled in an accident at the time and his car was kept in a garage.[9]
Another term which could also become popular is the Einfeld Dig Deeper Strategy: "When stuck in a hole of your own making, dig deeper... stupid".
