Tweet The latest decision from VCAT’s Legal Practice List is Legal Services Commissioner v JHMcC [2011] VCAT 231, a ‘guilty plea’ to six charges of professional misconduct. A lawyer purchased a franchise to operate under the name of one of Melbourne’s leading personal injury firms — I never knew such things existed — and was [...]

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Tweet Update, 31 January 2012:  See now Council of the NSW Law Society v Simpson [2011] NSWADT 242 re the meaning of ‘misappropriation’.  It was on this point that Justice Bell in Brereton overturned VCAT’s decision: they had not recorded making a finding of dishonest intention. Original post: Justice Bell yesterday allowed an appeal by [...]

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Tweet In Deputy Commissioner of Taxation v Law Institute of Victoria [2010] VSCA 73, the Court of Appeal unanimously overturned the trial judge’s decision in Law Institute of Victoria Limited v Deputy Commissioner of Taxation (No 2) [2009] VSC 179, which I posted about here.  I posted about round 1, before that, here.  Justice of [...]

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Tweet Relatively recently, I posted on the question of whether a Bureau de Spank desiring to rely on a practitioner’s dishonesty or other form of conscious wrongdoing must expressly allege it in the charge, and discussed Walter v Council of Queensland Law Society Incorporated (1988) 77 ALR 228 at 234; [1988] HCA 8.  Now, in [...]

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Tweet Update, 8 May 2009: The Westralians have been listening to Justice of Appeal Nettle.  Someone over there has thrown a 41 year old Margaret River solicitor into the slammer for almost 8, minimum of nearly 5.  He stole almost $900,000 from an elderly man who lived alone on a farm. Original post: A solicitor [...]

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Tweet Legal Services Commissioner v JDG [2008] LPT 17 is a shocking case in which a Queensland barrister was struck off after he lied when confronted by investigators with the true proposition that he had offered to pay a $50,000 bribe to a Magistrate or Crown prosecutor on behalf of a client.  He also took [...]

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Tweet R v Maurice B [2008] VSC 254 records the sentencing remarks of Nettle JA apparently sitting in the trial division following a guilty plea by a solicitor who stole a quarter of a million dollars. The solicitor argued the state of his mind was relevant in two ways. First, he said his impaired mental [...]

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Tweet Issac’s style of legal letter writing is legendary. There are some quite extensive private collections out there. I recall one letter said to have been penned by the man himself which began ‘Dear Sir, you are a petulant lunatic,’ and after some substantive words continued ‘You are a very small cog in a very [...]

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Tweet On 13 August 2008, Deputy President O’Dwyer found charges of misconduct at common law made out against Kylie Minogue’s one-time solicitor, the man towards the centre of the government’s Operation Wickenby investigation, Michael Brereton. See Legal Services Commissioner v Brereton [2008] VCAT 1723. Mr O’Dwyer found he had transferred more than $2.3 million of [...]

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