Nobel laureate Barry Marshall has admitted driving through a boom gate after becoming agitated and frustrated with car park attendants near a building named in his honour.
Professor Marshall was due to face trial in Perth Magistrates Court on Monday over the incident at the Queen Elizabeth II Medical Centre complex in Nedlands, not far from the Marshall Centre for Infectious Diseases Research and Training, in April last year.
Instead, the professor of medicine and microbiology entered a guilty plea to one count of criminal damage while the second count was discontinued.
Defence counsel Sam Vandongen told the court his client was frustrated with the car park attendants, who had a “history” of saying it was full when it was not.
Prof Marshall was dropping off something at his rooms, which was going to be collected, and was going to take just a few minutes, Mr Vandongen said.
He “popped” the boom gate off its housing, put it on the ground and drove in, allowing two cars in front of him to do the same, made his delivery then returned.
“By this stage, the car park attendants were all on notice and didn’t want to let Prof Marshall out,” Mr Vandongen said.
He became “quite agitated” as he wanted to get home to meet a tradesperson and his wife was calling asking where he was.
As he tried to drive out, an attendant jumped in front of his car “and behaved like a complete lunatic“, screaming and banging on the bonnet, causing $1400 worth of damage, Mr Vandongen said.
The police prosecutor said Prof Marshall bumped the attendant with his vehicle, reversed then drove through the boom gate, which had been repaired while he was away, “without hesitation”.
Mr Vandongen said that was not quite true.
“He pushed it and it broke,” the lawyer said.
“He was feeling he was being trapped in the car park by these people.”
Mr Vandongen said Prof Marshall accepted he was at fault, submitting he was an extraordinary man with a 27-page CV.
Magistrate Richard Bayly said it “wasn’t a particularly pleasant incident”.
“People who run car parks, they’ve got a job to do and no doubt do it to the best of their ability.”
Mr Bayly granted Prof Marshall a spent conviction, noting he had no prior criminal record and was not likely to reoffend.
He has offered to pay the $470 damage bill, was fined $750 and ordered to pay court costs of $107.50.
He declined to speak to media outside court.
Prof Marshall famously drank a petri dish containing the Helicobacter pylori bacteria in order to prove the link between the organisms and stomach ulcers, winning a 2005 Nobel Prize for that research along with colleague Robin Warren.
It disproved the theory the painful condition was caused by stress or spicy food and led to the development of treatments that saved countless lives.
(20min delay)