Tony Katavich has lost his appeal against paying former employee Mia Nelson more than $35,000 after he unfairly dismissed her for allegedly harbouring Nazi views.

Mia Nelson lived with a "sustained campaign of intimidatory conduct" from her former employer for nearly four years, a judge has found.



Long after she was wrongly fired for allegedly lying on her resume and bringing Nazi views into publishing company Haldeman LLC, boss Tony Katavich hired a private investigator who threatened her to drop employment court proceedings against him.



He wrote to the Law Society making complaints about her lawyer and to the Ministry of Justice seeking to have her legal aid withdrawn.



He sent slanderous emails to her future employer.

READ MORE:

* Boss told to pay accused 'neo-Nazi' $35,000

* Sacked worker wins case over 'Nazi' tag

* Katavich hired private investigator to 'harass' former employee

* Katavich grills former employees on 'Nazi views'

* Boss 'enjoys making life difficult'

* Boss says Nelson launched personal attacks as revenge

* Boss compares company to the Christian trinity

* Behind the Nixon statue



He and his company pursued multiple High Court claims against her and her then-partner, and offered him cash for evidence that Nelson had lied on her resume after they split up.



Nelson said in court she felt "constantly pressured" by the Wakefield businessman.

"From all of these things that Mr Katavich has done, and continues to do, I feel enormous pressure to drop everything and try get as far away from [him] as possible ... I am scared of him and what he is capable of," she said.

Marion van Dijk Mia Nelson outside the Nelson District and High Court. She was harassed by former boss Tony Katavich for years after leaving him out of the loop about a staff barbecue.

Now his extensive legal campaign against her has ended with a judge calling it "the worst form of bullying".

Katavich's company was ordered by the Employment Relations Authority to pay Nelson more than $35,000 in 2013 after he demoted and dismissed her from a managerial role at Haldeman in 2012.

Katavich's company appealed that verdict, but the matter was resolved in Nelson's favour by the Employment Court on Tuesday.

Marion van Dijk The office of Haldeman LLC in Wakefield, near Nelson, features a statue of former American president Richard Nixon.

The court heard Nelson set up "hitlerhatesbabies@gmail.com" with the password "ilovehitler" for her job, in which she was tasked with creating email addresses used to anonymously manipulate Google rankings and bury websites featuring negative reviews of Haldeman.

"Over time it was difficult to keep coming up with unique email addresses and the hilterhatesbabies one was just an out of the blue one I thought of in the moment," Nelson said.

Instead Judge Anthony Ford determined it was Nelson's failure to inform Katavich about an after-hours staff barbecue in 2012 which sparked his subsequent behaviour.

Nelson said she came to work the Monday after the staff gathering to find her office had been cleaned out.

"The framed pictures on the wall had been removed. So too had the couch, the side table, the trash bin and the extra chairs. My desk had been turned around to face towards the wall.

"It was basically turned into a cell and positioned so as to put me in a dunce hat corner."

Katavich also informed his staff that key parts of Nelson's job would be taken over by another less senior employee, firing Nelson a month later.

Judge Ford ruled that Katavich's "sustained campaign of intimidatory conduct" towards Nelson during and after her departure from Haldeman could not be condoned.

"I can confidently say that rarely, if ever, has this court been confronted with such a protracted array of post-dismissal actions and threatened actions aimed at coercing a dismissed employee into abandoning their employment claim," Ford wrote in his judgement.

Nelson said she never lied about her resume and the court found Katavich had "no evidence of any such falsehood".

Nelson's lawyer Luke Acland said the question at issue was "whether or not a fair and reasonable employer, in the circumstances that existed at that time, would have dismissed Ms Nelson".

Allegations that Nelson harboured Nazi views and falsified her resume were "essentially a manipulation of the facts," Acland said.

"Had she [Nelson] not had the foresight to keep email correspondence between her and Mr Katavich it may well be that manipulation could exist today."

Katavich said outside of court that he disputed the judgement, saying the judge wrongly accepted Nelson's evidence as fact.

The decision set a bad precedent for other employers who wanted to defend themselves against "out of control" employees, he said.

In court Katavich, who represented himself, asked Nelson whether she truly believed he had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in court cases simply to harass her.

"After working with you, yes," she replied.

THE WEIRD WORLD OF HALDEMAN

​There are more than a few curiosities in the purpose-built office of Haldeman LLC.

The company's gated mansion in Wakefield, south of Nelson, which is modelled on the White House has a brass statue of disgraced American president Richard Nixon outside it, arms outstretched and fingers in a 'V' peace sign.

Katavich has in the past compared himself to Nixon - a "fascinating chap" who was "crucified by the media".

Photographs of Tricky Dickie (Nixon) also adorn the building's interior and, if you can get pass the fingerprint scanner into Katavich's office, the heavy wooden and leather furnishings are not far removed from the Oval Office.

Despite their plush surroundings, Haldeman's employees had little freedom under companies policies enacted by Katavich in 2012.

Workers were confined to their desks and barred from emailing or interacting face-to-face with their colleagues.

Break times were denoted by an audio prompt, which "also features Richard Simmons sharing some messages and thoughts," Haldeman policy reads.

Katavich has also defended claims made by lawyer Luke Acland that his company sells information about radio stations, Australian mining and adoption otherwise freely available online at $200 a pop.

He said the Haldeman simplified "complex topics" and provided further original analysis.

Employees at Haldeman were taught various ways to manipulate the company's performance in Google searches.

One method was to post copyrighted material on a competitors webpage, then have the page removed under the U.S Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Nonsense articles and blogs were also created to outrank websites featuring negative comments about Haldeman.

Acland called Katavich's operation a "web of deceit" during the recent court hearing.

Katavich has countered that his business is entirely legal.