Can a legal regulator rescind a decision to bring disciplinary proceedings

The Supreme Court of Tasmania has made an important ruling in  Legal Profession Board of Tasmania v XYZ [2014] TASSC 33 about the finality of decisions made by legal regulators at the end of disciplinary investigations.  The decision suggests that in those jurisdictions with similar statutory provisions, until a disciplinary prosecution is launched, such decisions may be less final than I suspect many lawyers in Australia have previously believed.  A decision of the Victorian Court of Appeal, which related to a different situation where one of two courses following a disciplinary investigation was gone down and completed and the professional regulator sought subsequently to go back down the alternative course, was distinguished: Kabourakis v Medical Practitioners Board of Victoria [2006] VSCA 301. Continue reading “Can a legal regulator rescind a decision to bring disciplinary proceedings”

WASCA on the kind of recklessness in making statements which amounts to conduct warranting discipline

Traditionally, the law of professional discipline has differed from the law of negligence in three profound ways.  First, its aim is the protection of the public (though the policy in favour of protecting the reputation of the profession grossly infects the purity of this proposition in most analyses).  Secondly, it is about personal wrongdoing.  Statute aside, there is no law of attributed liability in contrast to doctrines such as vicarious liability in the law of negligence.  And thirdly, simple as opposed to gross negligence was never considered to warrant discipline.  Things got messed up by the introduction into disciplinary statutes of a concept of unsatisfactory professional conduct defined in terms identical to the test for simple professional negligence.

Disciplinary tribunals (and, in my experience, disciplinary investigators and prosecutors) seem to lapse from time to time into the language of ‘should have known’ even outside the prosecution of that species of unsatisfactory professional conduct which is defined by reference to the test of simple professional negligence.  Two practitioners had to go to two Courts of Appeal to reverse decisions on dishonesty charges which were horribly infected by objective reasoning:  Legal Services Commissioner v Brereton [2011] VSCA 241 and Giudice v Legal Practitioners Complaints Committee [2014] WASCA 115.  Surprisingly, the former decision did not get a guernsey in the latter.  The law of recklessness is authoritatively restated in the three separate judgments in Giudice and I have set the whole lot out below along with some observations about Brereton’s Case. Continue reading “WASCA on the kind of recklessness in making statements which amounts to conduct warranting discipline”

Disciplinary decisions result in res judicatae

So said England’s highest court in R (on the application of Coke-Wallis) v Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales [2011] UKSC 2. An accountant and his wife were directors and shareholders of trust companies carrying out regulated financial services in Jersey.  Jersey is an island off the coast of Normandy which is not part of the United Kingdom but which has a large financial services sector closely associated with England, and 20% flat taxation. A Jersey regulator ordered the accountant to stop what he was doing and directed that no records of the companies be removed from their offices.  Four days later they were arrested at a car ferry with suitcases full of company records, ‘in flagrant breach’, as Lord Collins put it, of the direction, which they were trying to ‘spirit off the island’ as Lord Clarke put it.

Disregard of a direction of the regulator was a crime. They were convicted and fined.  Their appeal was unsuccessful. About a year later, the Investigation Committee of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales ‘preferred a complaint’ against the accountant.  It was heard in April 2005 and dismissed on the spot. About a year later again, the Committee preferred a second complaint.  The accountant took a preliminary point: the defence of res judicata.  The Institute’s disciplinary committee found that the second complaint was not barred by res judicata.  On review, the trial judge and the Court of Appeal agreed.  The Supreme Court unanimously did not, and kyboshed the second complaint, rewarding the accountant for his stamina. See also the case note by Mayer Brown. (In Victoria, compare Kabourakis v Medical Practitioners Board of Victoria [2005] VSC 493, which I noted here.  It suggests that often, these questions will be determined by statutory interpretation, especially where the disciplinary procedures are set up by statute.)

Continue reading “Disciplinary decisions result in res judicatae”

Can’t keep up

Many new decisions of interest are coming out and I will not have time to blog them any time soon as I have to go to University and concentrate on my latest and hopefully last field of study, Shareholders Rights and Remedies.  Here are some pointers in case you want to read this slew of the new yourself.

Here is a landmark English case on illegally obtained evidence in civil proceedings: Imerman v Tchenguiz [2010] EWCA Civ 908, and CMS Cameron McKenna’s case note.  A husband in business with his wife’s brother separated from his wife.  Worried that he would hide assets from the wife, the brother copied information from the husband’s computer.  The English Court of Appeal refused to admit the evidence.  One of the little changes wrought by the Victorian Evidence Act, 2008 is to make clear that illegally obtained evidence may be inadmissible in civil proceedings as much as in criminal proceedings.

Then there is a mega-solicitor’s negligence decision from NSW’s District Court’s Judge Levy: Mills v Bale [2010] NSWDC 162.  It was a regretted settlement case of the kind I wrote about in ‘Compromise of litigation and lawyers’ liability’ (2002) 10 Torts Law Journal 267.  The client accepted a fraction of his claim on the basis of advice that the other side had ‘damning video evidence’ and that he might get nothing if he went to trial. The solicitor had no file note of the relevant conversation and no recollection of the alleged events. The client won more than $700,000, a rare victory since such cases do not often succeed. The judgment is 807 paragraphs long.  Analysis of the witnesses’ credit occupies 100 paragraphs.

Two from Victoria’s Court of Appeal:

  • First, Justice of Appeal Ashley with whom Acting Justice of Appeal Beach agreed, pronounced the latest chapter in the extraordinary saga of Shaw v Gadens Lawyers, another victory for professional negligence specialist Sam Tatarka.  It has not been published on Austlii, but was delivered on 3 August 2010. The Court confirmed that when VCAT determines civil disputes involving compensation claims, they do not entertain a cause of action created by the Legal Profession Act, 2004.  Rather, they are given a statutory grant to hear professional negligence cases according to common law principles.  Let me know if you want a copy.
  • Secondly, the latest in the saga of Byrne v Marles (see this earlier post about the earlier decision which threw the Legal Services Commissioner’s office into chaos): Byrne v Legal Services Commissioner [2010] VSCA 162.  Mr Byrne successfully sought judicial review of the Commissioner’s decision to characterise a complainant’s complaint as a disciplinary complaint.  The Appealohs held that there was a breach of natural justice in failing to provide an opportunity for the solicitor to be heard on that question.  The Commissioner appears then to have written to every complainant and given them an opportunity to make submissions.  Mr Byrne made submissions, and the Commissioner, unmoved, came to the same decision.  He sought judicial review of that, and that is what this decision is about.  He failed, but along the way, had the former Commissioner re-spanked.  The former Commissioner’s reasons for reaffirming her original classification, absolutely typical of the reasons I have seen her give in a template-like manner, over and over, were described by Justice of Appeal Ashley at [96] as ‘too smart by half. They invited further proceedings’.  In fact, his Honour found at [63] that they were not reasons at all; they were just a statement of the conclusion which the reasons should have supported.

Another decision of the utmost importance to this blog, which again passed me by, is the decision of New Zealand’s Supreme Court (equivalent to our High Court) in Z v Dental Complaints Assessment Committee [2009] 1 NZLR 1; [2008] NZSC 55.  More to come, needless to say.  Meanwhile, You will appreciate my interest in the case when you consider that the Chief Justice opined that disciplinary proceedings making serious allegations should be proved on the criminal standard of proof (remember what Justice Finkelstein said about disciplinary proceedings?), as opposed to the civil burden as explained in Briginshaw v Briginshaw.  Paragraph no. 1 of the Chief Justice’s reasons said: Continue reading “Can’t keep up”

Double jeopardy and disciplinary proceedings

Coke-Wallis v Institute of Chartered Accountants In England and Wales [2009] EWCA Civ 730 considered the application of principles of res judicata and autrefois acquit (the criminal version of the same principle, an aspect of double jeopardy) to disciplinary ‘prosecutions’.  It did so in the context of the disciplining of accountants.  The relevant scheme made a conviction conclusive evidence of an act likely to bring the accountant, and the profession, into disrepute. The conviction itself, and the conduct of which it was conclusive evidence were each able to justify disciplinary sanction. Mr Coke-Wallis was convicted of a crime but the disciplinary prosecution brought on that basis failed unexpectedly.  So the regulator charged him again, by reference to the conduct which was the subject of the conviction.  The English Court of Appeal held that the principles of res judicata, or autrefois acquit (which it seemed to assume applied to disciplinary proceedings) were not infringed, because the two charges were separate and distinct. That left open the question that though there was no legal bar to the second prosecution, nevertheless it constituted an abuse of process.  After analysis, no abuse was found.  English solicitors Shepherd + Wedderburn have kindly prepared a little case note.  Justice Gillard’s decision on a similar problem in Kabourakis v Medical Practitioners Board of Victoria [2005] VSC 493 is the subject of this post.

The Institute does not always seem to get everything perfect.  Take for example, the Queen’s Bench Division’s description of another prosecution, in Gorlov, R (on the application of) v The Institute Of Chartered Accountants In England And Wales [2001] EWHC Admin 220, justifying an exceptional award of costs against a professional disciplinarian: Continue reading “Double jeopardy and disciplinary proceedings”

More cases

I only just caught up with the fact that the Court of Appeal has overturned Justice Gillard’s decision in Kabourakis v Medical Board of Victoria [2005] VSC 493, the subject of an earlier post. See [2006] VSC 301.

VCAT’s Vice President Harbison, sitting in the Legal Practice List for the first time I am aware of, has contributed what appears to be a most interesting addition to the authorities about whether solicitors engage in trade and commerce for the purposes of the Fair Trading Act, 1999 (and, by analogy, of the Trade Practices Act, 1974), and whether solicitors may ever be sued under the Fair Trading Act, 1999. As to which, see this earlier post. The decision is Walsh v PJCC&A Pty [2008] VCAT 962 which I will certainly be posting a detailed analysis of.

Then a NSW decision has illustrated again the problem of sloppy regulators failing to consider whether what purports to be a complaint received by them is in fact a complaint as defined by the Act which regulates them (an allegation in both of the cases noted here). This time it was NSW’s Legal Services Commissioner, Steve Mark, getting bashed up by the NSW Administrative Appeals Tribunal’s Legal Services Division in Legal Services Commissioner v SG [2008] NSWADT 48:

’64 As stated, Mr Mark determined that a complaint had been made of deliberate charging of grossly excessive amounts of costs, when no such complaint had been made.

65 Without any further evidence or effort to obtain a valid expert opinion, the LSC instituted the complaint and brought this matter before the Tribunal on the equivocal opinion expressed by Mr McIntyre. Samantha Gulliver investigated the complaint on behalf of Mr Mark, however what, if anything, resulted from such investigation was not placed before the Tribunal. Continue reading “More cases”

Staying disciplinary proceedings as abuses of process

Update, 23 December 2009: Doubt is cast on the correctness of Hunt AJA’s comments by Hodgson JA, the other justices of appeal agreeing, in Council of the NSW Bar Association v A (2008) 72 NSWLR 236 at 249; [2008] NSWCA 164 ([40]).

Original post: The following passage from the NSW Court of Appeal’s decision in Lindsay v Health Care Complaints Commission [2005] NSWCA 356 (Hunt AJA, others agreeing) casts some doubt on whether a medical disciplinary tribunal presided over by a judge had power to stay a disciplinary proceeding as an abuse of process. The issue arose in the context of which the legislation provided that “The members of the Tribunal are to conduct an inquiry into any complaint … referred to it”, and then, later “It is the duty of a Committee and the Tribunal to hear inquiries and appeals under this Act and to determine those inquiries and appeals expeditiously.” As the Court noted, “Both provisions express the obligation of the Tribunal to exercise that jurisdiction in unusually mandatory terms”. Continue reading “Staying disciplinary proceedings as abuses of process”

Justice Gillard says: prosecute the same offence as many times as you like

Update: This decision was reversed on appeal: Kabourakis v Medical Practitioners Board of Victoria [2006] VSCA 301.

Kabourakis v Medical Practitioners Board of Victoria [2005] VSC 493 (Gillard J)

Justice Gillard said doctors get no res judicata and allowed the doctors’ regulator to fix a bungled prosecution following a complaint by deciding to investigate the matter already decided under its power to investigate of its own volition. Continue reading “Justice Gillard says: prosecute the same offence as many times as you like”