Lawyer at the end of his career cops penalty for professional faults

A now-retired Hutt Valley lawyer has to pay a fine and costs of more than $68,000 for his handling of the affairs of a client with early-stage dementia.

The Lawyers and Conveyancers Disciplinary Tribunal said for too long Lloyd Collins had failed to accept he had conflicted loyalties.

The tribunal found he had been negligent.

His client had given her sister an enduring power of attorney. The sister and other family members then bought the client’s house at auction.

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Although the purchase price was said to exceed a registered valuation the house was still sold a fortnight later for a $40,000 profit, the tribunal said. It said Collins maintained he was not aware of the profit until the complaint was made about him.

Another person at Collins’ firm acted on the property conveyancing.

The tribunal said it wondered why Collins’ “antennae were not bristling”, and that he did not follow the transaction and consider whether the sister was in breach of any duty to the client.

This was especially so because he had earlier received an email warning about the sister. Within an hour he had forwarded it to the sister.

The email warned of the possibility of undue influence and financial abuse on the part of the sister. If he had seen it as a genuine concern, Collins could be said to have failed his client by not discussing it alone with her, the tribunal said.

He said he discussed all relevant issues with her but did not have notes of the discussions and could not say which issues were covered, it said.

Later he corrected the type of enduring power of attorney that was signed, so that the sister was able to immediately make decisions for the client, as the client had wished. Instead the original type only gave the sister power when the client became unable to make decisions for herself.

However, the correction was made without regularising any of the steps taken in the interim.

In its censure of his actions the tribunal said he took no steps to check with his client in person, on her own, when potential undue influences were brought to his attention.

He hadn’t discharged his obligations to his client “with due consideration and awareness of all potential vulnerabilities”. He seemed to have been somewhat dismissive of the warning, the tribunal said.

They were “serious defaults, albeit unintentional”, it said.

On top of the censure Collins was fined $8000.

He was also ordered to pay costs of $45,000 to the lawyers’ standards committee that took the complaint to the tribunal, and to reimburse the New Zealand Law Society $15,362 for the costs of the tribunal that it had to pay, a total of $68,362.

Collins’ lawyer said, and the tribunal accepted, that by not asking for name suppression and having the ignominy of the disciplinary findings at the very end of his career Collins had already been significantly punished.