Powered by
MOMENTUM
MEDIA
A legal practitioner recently restrained from engaging in practice was allegedly escorted from a hospital he regularly visited amid reports of the smell of urine, “clinking” empty bottles in his bag and shouts of being a “criminal lawyer”.
Justice Elisabeth Peden of the NSW Supreme Court has made orders restricting a practitioner from engaging in legal practice or advertising himself as a legal practitioner.
In April, the lawyer was refused a practising certificate for the year ending 30 June 2026 after the Law Society found he engaged in legal practice without a practising certificate, engaged in unsupervised legal practice without professional indemnity insurance, and failed to disclose relevant matters.
The court relied on evidence from two solicitors who observed the lawyer representing he was entitled to practice.
Justice Peden also heard evidence from a nurse unit manager at Prince of Wales Hospital in Randwick, who said she witnessed the lawyer regularly visit a friend over nine months.
The lawyer allegedly appeared to the manager as “dishevelled, smelling of urine and slurring his words and stumbling”.
She added she allegedly heard “clinking” from inside his duffle bag, “which she said sounded like empty bottles”.
Often removed by security due to intoxication, the lawyer would become verbally abusive and shout he was a “criminal lawyer with over 20 years’ experience”, the manager also claimed.
The manager also gave evidence that the lawyer appeared at video hearings before the Mental Health Review Tribunal for his friend, and she assumed he held a practising certificate.
On one occasion, the lawyer was allegedly hostile, “saying he would not leave until he received documentation from a person in the ward and $600 to represent that person”.
A solicitor who investigated these claims disclosed to the court that the lawyer's LinkedIn indicated he was a “fulltime lawyer”.
In written submissions, the lawyer said he “thoroughly disagreed” with the evidence of all four witnesses, and the manager’s affidavit in particular was “full of errors”.
Despite these assertions, Justice Pender said there was no evidence to meaningfully disprove the Law Society’s evidence because the lawyer did not appear and his evidence was not read.
“Even if I was to have regard to [the lawyer's] filed evidence, it contains unsubstantiated allegations of dishonesty of the Law Society’s witnesses, which would have been inadmissible.
“There is no reason why I would not accept the unchallenged evidence of the solicitors, who are officers of the court, or the evidence of [the manager],” Justice Peden said.
“I accept all of their evidence.”
