The Personal Cost of His Support
While supporting Bain, Karam spent his 'considerable fortune' on the case. He'd become wealthy in various business ventures including hamburger bars and country pubs and the country's first major independent vending machine company. He had more than 20 investment properties, a launch and racehorses and lived on a 10 acre property in Clevedon. Karam says the crusade cost him millions and his friends estimated his personal losses could be as much as $4 million in terms of his time, loss of earnings and costs of legal and forensic experts. He spent it in his pursuit of the case and ended up living in 15 to 20 different rental houses over the past decade while trying to prove Bain's innocence. He received some compensation prior to the retrial by working as a researcher and investigator for Bain's legal team, where he was paid up to $95 an hour.
Karam has also taken legal action to defend himself in pursuit of the case. In addition to being sued for defamation by two police officers, he also took on the media with litigation against TVNZ, North and South magazine and the New Zealand Herald. He sued journalist Rosemary McLeod over an article that cast doubt on his motives for supporting Bain. They settled out of court. In 2011 he sued Trade Me for defamation over 349 posts on the website's public message boards about Bain. In 2012 he began legal proceedings against Kent Parker for defamation. Parker is a member of a group opposed to David Bain receiving compensation from the crown.
Karam acknowledges that fighting the case has taken its toll on him over the years. Interviewed in the New Zealand Herald in 2007 under the headline Joe Karam: Freedom Fighter, he said "For many years the mainstream media, judiciary and politicians just thought of me as a raving redneck who'd lost the plot." He stopped socialising with rich-list friends because people would inevitably "buttonhole him about the case" and he felt compelled to put them straight - "destroying the dinner party" in the process. He said that "every morning for two years, he would wake up, sink to the edge of the bed and cry". When asked what motivated him to keep going, he said it was because of his "innate hatred of unfairness and urge to help those less fortunate".
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