Conduct unbecoming. Payments ordered by cost reviser
This is a summary of a decision made by a Lawyers Standards Committee under the Lawyers and Conveyancers Act 2006. This summary was published in LawTalk 742.
A lawyer who failed to refund an amount to his client as ordered under a cost revision pursuant to the Law Practitioners Act 1982 was found guilty by a Standards Committee of conduct unbecoming a lawyer. The lawyer, George Bogiatto, was fined $750 and ordered to pay costs.
When the client complained to the New Zealand Law Society, Mr Bogiatto was by then more than four weeks overdue in complying with the cost reviser’s order to refund the client $6,862.50. When Mr Bogiatto finally made a payment to the client more than three weeks later, he failed to pay the full amount. The lawyer deducted $1,829.50, issuing the client with a new invoice for the deducted amount and sending the client a cheque for the balance.
The Law Society asked Mr Bogiatto for details of time spent, hourly rates charged, the work done and a summary of all attendances covered by the new invoice, but he was unable to provide any. After two time extensions, Mr Bogiatto informed the Society only that the invoice was for an additional matter on which the client had instructed him, relating to transactions on a particular property. The client disputed this, responding that they hadn’t instructed Mr Bogiatto on that matter. They also said that they had never agreed to the lawyer deducting any money from the refund ordered by the cost reviser.
The Standards Committee determined that the client wasn’t liable to pay the invoice and that Mr Bogiatto wasn’t entitled to deduct the invoiced amount from the refund due to the client. The Standards Committee ordered the lawyer to cancel the invoice and pay the client the invoiced amount.
Lawyers are expected to give prompt effect to a cost revision and the Standards Committee saw Mr Bogiatto’s deliberate frustration of the cost reviser’s order as a serious matter. The Committee decided Mr Bogiatto was guilty of conduct unbecoming a lawyer and therefore of “unsatisfactory conduct” within the meaning of the Lawyers and Conveyancers Act 2006. It fined Mr Bogiatto $750 and ordered him to pay the Law Society $500 for costs and expenses. The Standards Committee also decided that the lawyer’s name should be published.