Personal disruptions

Solicitor off the track over "voidness" scam … The Keddies wash-up - no professional misconduct for $215,000 over-charge … Depression and despair win the day for solicitor in dysfunctional partnership ... Bureaux de Spank spanked 

LET'S hope that Merewether conveyancer Nicholas Coren can get his ticket back asap. 

It was confiscated last month by the Law 'n' Order Society in the midst of Supreme Court proceedings over a property dispute. 

The man is creative, has an innovative sense of language and is a spelling revisionist. 

Keeping him out of circulation deprives the profession and the courts of a lot of fun. 

Justice Robert Beech-Jones came down hard on poor Nic, finding that he had concocted a letter claiming that previous consent orders in the Supreme Court no longer applied due to "voidness". 

He was acting for Ian Anderson, a farmer, whose property at Nundle had fallen into the possession of the mortgagee, Provident Capital Ltd. 

Coren got in touch with Henry Davis York, acting for Provident, asserting that the mortgagee had not complied with the Farm Debt Mediation Act. 

HDY disputed this, saying that nothing had occurred contrary to the Act. 

In any event, Nic came up with a fabulous idea. In a letter purportedly sent to HDY he  claimed: 

"The consent orders entered into in the common law proceedings will be deemed never to have been entered into." 

Magic. The order of the court was made to vanish without the court being consulted. 

There were a few tiny typos, adding flavour to the missive - he gave the date for adjourned directions hearing as May "2913"; he claimed aggravated "dmages" and helpfully suggested HDY contact him if it had further "enwuiries". 

Of course, Nic didn't send this magic letter to HDY at all. He gave it to Mr Anderson, who promptly went out to the property waved it at the occupants, told them to get off and posted it around the fences. 

Justice Beech-Jones patiently pointed out that for Coren to allow his client to believe that the consent orders could be ignored was "entirely misconceived". 

"Orders of this court are valid unless and until set aside." 

Provident applied for costs against Coren - s.99 of the Civil Procedure Act. 

There was mention of r.34 of the Professional Code of Conduct - something about legal practitioners not doing anything calculated to mislead or intimidate … or which "grossly exceeds the legitimate assertion of the rights or entitlements of the practitioner's client". 

The judge found that Nic could not have had a reasonable belief in the truth of his concoction.

"Mr Coren armed his client with a letter, reckless as to whether it was true or not in asserting that the Supreme Court orders were deemed never to have been entered ... He engaged in that conduct behind the backs of the solicitors acting on behalf of Provident." 

The judge had nowhere else to go but a finding of "serious misconduct". A costs order against Nic for $55,000 was the upshot. 

Poor blighter. 

In April 2011, a lawyer called Nicolas Coren was slotted in the Wyong Local Court with a $1,000 fine and a conviction for using amphetamines. 

According to press reports, a statement of facts tendered to the court said police saw Mr Coren leave a "drug premises" on City Road, Merewether, on January 5, 2011.  

Police stopped his Toyota Corolla and found 1.38 grams of amphetamines and 25 tablets of the prescription medication dexamphetamine.

Magistrate Glenn Walsh was quoted as saying that Mr Coren was living a "double life". 

See: Beech-Jones' reasons in Provident Capital v Anderson & Ord (No.3)

*   *   *

Bureaux de Spank on the eastern seaboard have themselves come in for a spot of spanking from appeal judges. 

In Sydney a top heavy Court of Appeal (Bathurst CJ, Beazley P and Hoeben CJ@CL) assembled to hear Philip Scroope's appeal against a finding by the ADT that he was guilty of prof misconduct. 

Scroope was the last man standing when the music stopped at Keddies. He was in the frame for the grotesque overcharging in the Meng matter. 

Mrs Meng's injury case was settled in December 2005, with admissions and no trial, for $3.5 million, out of which Keddies suctioned a massive $557,831 (incl. GST) in costs. There was another $255,000 in disbursements. The total bill came to $819,694.77.

Russell admitted that the firm's bill was $215,075.65 greater than it should have been. Over $85,000 was billed for items that were not contemplated in the costs agreement.  

In an agreed statement of facts Russell accepted that the fair and reasonable cost for the Meng matter, including the 25 percent uplift, ex-GST, would be $273,595.   

Part of Scroope's bill in the Tariq matter (SMH)He said that he did not know how the bill was prepared and he was not present in the office at the time because Scroop had "day to day conduct of Ms Meng's matter". 

In his agreed statement of facts with the LSC Scroope accepted that Ms Meng was "overcharged" and the bill (over-inflated by 63 percent) was "excessive" and that he had a "significant level of responsibility for that having occurred". 

Scroope prepared and signed the itemised bill.  

Even though the LSC only contended that Scoope was up for unprofessional conduct, the ADT pinged him for professional misconduct and a fine of $5,000. 

Scroope maintained that fault also lay with the "accounting system" and others in the firm. 

Beazley P said that Scroope was not responsible for the accounting software and that his failures were not repeated failures. 

She knocked the finding back to unprofessional conduct and a fine of $2,000. Of course, the reprimand still stood. 

Happily Scroope has introduced a more "rigorous" accounting system into his current practice. 

The Meng case was just one of many overcharging allegations against Keddies, but the only one pursued by Steve Mark's LSC.

In March 2009, the LSC dismissed overcharging allegations against Scroope from former client Mohammed Tariq. 

So that's a wrap on the Keddies saga. Russell who wasn't practising was stuck off. He had oversight of the Meng case, but was not responsible for its day-by-day carriage. Scroope had carriage and prepared the bill but no oversight, plus there was a shonky accounting system. Barakat and Rouston went home free. 

$2,000 from the employee. Ka-ching. 

See CA reasons 

*   *   *

Burgess: back at workHenderson & Ball partner Andrew Burgess took the Legal Services Commissioner on a trip to VicAppeals after VCAT put him off the track for nine months and then a further 12 months on a restricted ticket. He also had to cough-up $11,000 in costs. 

Burgess said VCAT's vice prez, Judge Pamela Jenkins, ignored his psychological state, the various pressures he was under and his financial condition. 

Depression, extreme stress, divorce, his mother's cancer and his father's death - were all on-going at the time complaints about Burgess' conduct were bubbling to the surface. 

There were four charges of professional misconduct: being a terrible slow coach in the administration of estates; slack in following-up instructions from a client; slow to return telephone calls and emails, brief counsel and provide interrogatories; plus failure to honour undertaking about attending re-education camp (CPD). 

One of the matters mired in tardiness commenced in 2004 and ended with a complaint to the LSC six years later. 

The formidable Judge Pam had little sympathy for the solicitor's plight, dismissing his woes as "unexceptional events [which were] likely to affect most busy professionals at some stage". 

The CA, with the kindly Neave JA in the saddle, said that "with respect" this was ... 

"to ignore the undisputed psychological evidence that, in the applicant's case, the concatenation of personal disruptions which he faced at the relevant time was productive of a degree of depression which so immobilized him as to make any additional task, including the task of communication with the commissioner, seem to be overwhelming." 

The last time we heard about Pam, who is a former staffer for Vic AG Jan Wade, the CA found that she had been "misconceived [and] intemperate" for unlawfully ordering an accused into custody, telling him: 

"You might be lucky, you might get away with it …" 

The argument from Burgess was that the state of his bank accounts, the sale of his family home and the financial strife his family would be in - all demanded that he be allowed to continue to ply the trade. 

Neave agreed. Mitigating factors won the day. 

The $11,000 in costs of the first round still stood, but he got costs for the appeal. 

Importantly, the suspension from practice was overturned and instead Burgess would have to spend the next 21 months as an employed solicitor. 

This might be difficult because the court heard: 

"There have been issues within the partnership [at Henderson & Ball] since 2009, for which he sought advice from Mr Gronow of the Law Institute of Victoria. 

The respondent has a dysfunctional relationship with his partners; the partnership is under significant tension; and there would be no possibility of him working as an employee solicitor within the firm.

If his practising certificate were to be suspended, the respondent said that he would be unable to support his family and the partnership would be dissolved."

Happy days. 

See the gory details ...