Lawyer Accused of Intimidating colleague: Lawyer Loses Appeal to Keep Practising
Monday 15 April 2013 @ 9.46 a.m. | Legal Research
In Forster v Legal Services Board [2013] VSCA 73 (11 April 2013) the Victorian Court of Appeal has dismissed an appeal by a practitioner to be allowed to keep his practising licence following on from evidence of the practitioner having intimidated opposing counsel in earlier proceedings.
In dismissing the appeal, Kyrou J said evidence had been given that during a Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (VCAT) hearing on 18 November 2010, the practitioner approached the Counsel for the Legal Practitoners Board (Dr Hanscombe) . . . "and with his face within inches of her face, and in an intimidatory manner, as he followed her from the bar table towards the court door, he repeatedly called her a 'monster'."
The proceeding flowed from a long running string of matters involving accusations agianst the practitoner and his firm. The accusations related to unlawful double-billing of clients caught up in Australia's longest-running compensation battle, namely, the infamous 1964 collision between the navy destroyer HMAS Voyager and the aircraft carrier HMAS Melbourne. The practitoner and his firm handled 89 of 214 personal injury claims against the Australian government by survivors of the collision.
The allegations included that the practitioner had misappropriated funds relating to the case, the Legal Services Board refused to renew his practising certificate in September 2010 on the basis that he was no longer fit and proper to continue holding a practising certificate and he appealed the board's decision to VCAT and lost.
VCAT concluded his behaviour was "reprehensible and amounts to conduct which falls
short of the professional standards expected of a legal practitioner". The practitioner's
legal firm has been placed into receivership, but as the provisions of the Legal Profession Act 2004 (Vic) allow a person to remain entitled to practice until all of their appeal rights
have been exhausted, the practitoner continued working.
In the court of appeal Kyrou J further said that the practitioner sent a letter dated
3 February 2011, to Dr Hanscombe as follows: "...it is my heartfelt opinion that your
advocacy is unduly vindictive and totally disproportionate. As you are no doubt aware
legal costs claimed against me now exceed $1.5 million and the prospects of say three
further years designed to destroy me is not pleasant. My opinion of your behaviour
is causing me emotionally very disturbing thoughts towards myself and you."
The full court of appeal in a lengthy judgment dismissed the practitioners appeal against a VCAT order rejecting his application to review the Board's decision not to renew his practising certificate because he was not a fit and proper person.
Sources:
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