JOHNS v THE LAW SOCIETY OF NEW SOUTH WALES [1991] NSWCA 158

JOHNS v THE LAW SOCIETY OF NEW SOUTH WALES SUPREME COURT OF NEW SOUTH WALES COURT OF APPEAL

SAMUELS AP, MAHONEY and CLARKE JJA 5 June 1991, 6 June 1991

[1991] NSWCA 158

LEGAL PRACTITIONERS — PROFESSIONAL MISCONDUCT LEGAL PRACTITIONERS — solicitor struck off in 1981 for professional misconduct — application for restoration to the Roll of Solicitors — principles set out in Ex parte Dennis Re The Legal Practitioners' Act, Court of Appeal, 23 December 1988, unreported, applied — order made admitting to Roll.

Samuels JA The claimant, Robert James Johns, was born on 30 March 1946 and admitted as a solicitor of the Supreme Court of New South Wales on 6 June 1969. From 1972 until 1975 he carried on practice as a sole practitioner in Bankstown and from 1976 or 1977 to 1981 at Padstow and Revesby. On 27 August 1981 the Solicitors' Statutory Committee ordered that the claimant's name be struck off the Roll of Solicitors and an appeal to the Court of Appeal was dismissed on 15 June 1982. The claimant now seeks an order that he be admitted or readmitted to the Roll.

The particulars of the professional misconduct found against the claimant are set out in the report of the appeal: Johns v The Law Society of New South Wales [1982] 2 NSWLR 1. There is a convenient summary contained in the written submissions filed on behalf of The Law Society upon which I can gratefully draw.

(1) There were findings of dishonesty in that the claimant, at least twice, falsely certified to The Law Society that he had complied with s41 and s42 of The legal Practitioners Act 1898 (the provision then in force) "not only carelessly and recklessly but knowing [that his certificates] were false": [1982] 2 NSWLR at 11 and 16. This conduct was aggravated by the fact that it ignored not only the advice of the claimant's own accountant, Mr Talbot, but that of Mr Moss and Mr Wilton, investigators for The Law Society who first examined the claimant's affairs in March 1977 and continued investigations from time to time at intervals up to the hearing of the appeal.