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| dodgy attorney tries to spin a web of lies |

There is a host of case law providing us with stories of unscrupulous attorneys, one of them being Oshry vs Natal Law Society. In this case the applicant unsuccessfully applied to be re-admitted as an attorney after being struck from the roll.

 

The applicant was admitted as an attorney at the age of 31, after practicing in Johannesburg, he was enrolled as an attorney in Durban and started practicing. He was 35 at the time, the court noted, ‘a man of mature years.’ After practicing briefly he left to go and live in Israel, and the Natal Law Society began to investigate his conduct.

 

His questionable behavior began from the word go. He initially practiced from his hotel room, for some six weeks, only moving into offices for the two months before he left for Israel.

 

He opened a trust account but he never paid any money into it, despite the fact that he had received money from some of his clients, one of them being a Mrs Talbert. This unsuspecting client gave him a R300 deposit for a divorce matter, which the court noted he put into his pocket. He had only done about R30 worth of work on the file when he left for Israel. In the application for re-admission the applicant stated that felt guilty about pocketing the money. As a result he wrote out a receipt, before he left for Israel, for consideration by his father, in case she wanted to recover the money. A poor Mrs Meth was subject to the same fate, and she too received a receipt to advance a claim against the applicant’s father.

 

In addition he had also issued 47 cheques which totaled R17 500, all of which were dishonoured on presentation. In his re-admission application he initially claimed that he was hoping to borrow the money before the cheques became payable. However he later conceded that the cheques were issued in respect of some gambling transactions. And to further add to his monetary woes, he issued a cheque from the trust account for R2250 knowing that there were no funds in his trust account.

 

After practicing for a brief period, he simply left for Israel, but made no provision for his clients. In his re-admission application he stated that this was not true and that he had made arrangements, that his secretary would refer the clients to a Mr Berkowitz who would deal with their files on a pro amico basis. The Court held that this was not satisfactory.

 

The court refused the application on the grounds that the applicant showed no remorse for his conduct, he had not attempted to repay the Fidelity Fund, who had paid some of the applicants debts, and refused to repay the costs of the Law Society. The applicant blamed his gambling addiction for all his previous irresponsible behaviour. The court held that there was no evidence to show that he would not behave in this manner again. For these reasons the application was dismissed.

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