A CLARE solicitor has been struck off after he was found guilty of 26 counts of misconduct, on one occasion buying a car worth €32,000 from money misappropriated from clients.
Desmond O'Brien, Cregg, Lahinch, Co Clare, was found guilty of misappropriating a total of €119,131 of clients' money as well as number of other counts of misconduct in a case brought by the Law Society of Ireland according to a report in the August/Septbember editon of the Law Society Gazette.
The Solicitors’ Disciplinary Tribunal found that in April 2006, Mr O’Brien had misappropriated €31,900 of clients’ money in order to buy a car.
In February 2007, he misappropriated €2,727.50 to pay his family’s VHI bill. In February 2006, he misappropriated €417 to pay his wife’s car insurance. On two other occasions, he used clients’ money to pay gas and electricity bills.
Other times, misappropriated funds were lodged into various bank accounts in his own name as well as joint accounts held by Mr O’Brien and his wife, as well as a credit card account in Mr O’Brien’s name.
In May 2005 and April 2006, he misappropriated €9,500 and €6,000 of clients’ money respectively, which were used to purchase bank drafts payable to his wife which were then lodged into their joint account in Bank of Ireland.
Further to above-mentioned misappropriation of clients’ funds, Mr O’Brien was found to have:
- deducted costs from the estate of a deceased person without issuing a bill of costs amounting to €2,178;
- issued a client account cheque worth €14,000 payable to the Revenue Commissioners, which was used along with two other client account cheques, worth €3,684 and €11,141, to pay the stamp duty and penalty on a deed relating to a purchase by a client;
- deprived the elderly beneficiary of the estate of a deceased person for the three years up until he ceased practice having misappropriated some of the estate money for his own benefit;
- paid €665 to a plant hire company and €283.22 to a refuse and recycling company, debiting the payments to the client ledger account of a deceased person although there was nothing in that client's file to support the payments;
- Caused or allowed a possible underpayment of capital gains tax in the case of a client arising from an alteration in the computation by the solicitor;
- issued a client account cheque for €15,700 made payable to a named client. The returned paid cheque showed that it was endorsed on the back with the name of a person bearing the same surname as the named client.
The solicitor caused the cheque to be wrongly debited to the estate account in the clients’ ledger, described in the books as a named deceased’s bequest, although there was no such beneficiary in that estate.
The books of account, however, showed that the solicitor acted for the first named client in the estate of a named deceased, and caused a bookkeeper/accountant to make false and misleading entries in the books of account.
The Solicitors’ Disciplinary Tribunal found Mr O’Brien guilty of misconduct in his practice on April 27th this year.
The matter was sent forward to the president of the High Court and, on June 14th, an order was made that Mr O’Brien be struck off the Roll of Solicitors.
The Law Society was ordered to recover the costs of the proceedings before the High Court and the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal from Mr O’Brien.