A principal lawyer has been reprimanded for his “petty” and unsatisfactory refusal to hand over client documents.
Jeffrey Paul Biggs has been reprimanded by the Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal (QCAT) for unsatisfactory professional conduct, having failed to “meet and maintain reasonable standards of competence and diligence expected of a legal practitioner”.
The Queensland Legal Services Commissioner alleged that between August 2020 and March 2021, Biggs failed to hand over client files to a complainant who made the request under a signed authority, which had referred to them holding an enduring power of attorney.
Along with the first request was an opinion of the rehabilitation registrar that the client “lacks the capacity to make complex decisions on his own” and needed the enduring power of attorney activated.
It was also alleged that Biggs unreasonably refused to accept an opinion of a rehabilitation registrar at a hospital his client had been admitted to and attempted to conduct his own assessment of the client’s capacity rather than seek an independent medical assessment.
Immediately after the first request in August 2020, Biggs called the client at the rehabilitation ward and told him he sounded “perfectly clear to him” and was “not convinced” he did not have capacity.
The nature of the conversation was “quite unsatisfactory”, but QCAT stressed this was not a particular of the disciplinary charge.
In September, Biggs wrote to the client’s general practitioner to claim the client “was very clear in his communications” and questioned whether the doctor had an “opinion” as to his capacity.
The following month, the doctor confirmed the client had been admitted to hospital “following a fall in July”. He also confirmed he had received the hospital report from the registrar.
In March 2021, the complainant’s solicitors sent Biggs a second opinion from a specialist who also found the client lacked capacity.
Biggs had accepted this by May 2021 but asserted the complainant’s first request for files was “not properly executed”.
There was numerous correspondence exchanged between Biggs and the complainant’s solicitor between June and December 2021.
The files were finally made available in December 2021, sixteen months after the first request and seven months after a second.
In material placed before the tribunal, Biggs claimed he had legitimate concerns that there was some elder abuse by his client’s children, which required him to be “particularly vigilant”.
QCAT’s Justice Thomas Bradley said that on the face of the August 2020 opinion, there was “no call” for Biggs to have made his own inquiries about the client’s capacity. He added these inquiries “could not justify” his failure to then act on the opinion.
In the March 2021 opinion, Justice Bradley said there was “no reasonable excuse” for Biggs’ seven-month delay.
He said that from at least October 2020, when the general practitioner confirmed the hospital stay, Biggs’ conduct was “dilatory, petty, and in the circumstances unsatisfactory”.
“The characterisation of the practitioner’s conduct after 9 October 2020, including the whole of the second period, as unsatisfactory professional conduct is appropriate,” Justice Bradley said.
The case: Legal Services Commissioner v Biggs [2026] QCAT 20.
