Any solicitor should reasonably be glum now. No office will escape the consequences of Ireland’s financial troubles and, ignoring runes, we need only read the recent record of our neighbour, the UK, to see what those consequences might be.

Let’s start with the straightforward stuff; Thomas McGoldrick, a solicitor, stole £1.25 million from a client left paralysed (from the neck down) by a traffic accident. The judge sentenced him to ten years in jail. McGoldrick’s firm acted for the client in his personal injury action. McGoldrick met the client once and when the compensation was lodged in the client account McGoldrick treated it as his own, driving a Mercedes and Jaguar with personalised number plates and sending his children to expensive prep schools.

In the UK, as in Ireland, theft like this is, effectively, a charge on all solicitors; the Law Society Compensation Fund has to make good the loss.

Any normal person might go off the rails on hearing news like this. Take Esther Cunningham for example. She was defending her cousin on a dangerous dog prosecution but had to be escorted from court after kissing a solicitor, swearing at an usher and insulting the prosecutor while “fortified” with brandy. To her credit her legal representative said of her; “The forcible kissing of a solicitor is something that has been difficult to accept”. Who, among her colleagues, would not agree?

Distraction, even while remaining on the rails, so to speak, could also be easily foreseen following on such troubles. Consider how readily a solicitor, raffling a house, could forget to get a licence to run a lottery. The then-President of the Law Society , Paul Marsh warned his colleagues against launching prize draws because he feared that, as the recession deepened and house prices continued to fall, more people might be tempted to establish prize draws. He also feared that they could be used to conduct mortgage fraud or for money laundering. He pointed out that anyone found guilty of running an unlawful lottery faces a maximum sentence of 51 weeks in prison and/or a fine of up to £5,000 under the Gambling Act 2005.

One wonders whether Mr. Marsh was not himself distracted. Did he not know what many of his members were then doing? They were bribing people to get work for their firms.
A report described the practice in relation to the “miners’ scandal” in these terms;

“…some law firms charged fees to the miners out of their compensation awards. This “success fee” was often charged on the ground that the miner had been introduced to the solicitor by a claims handling company or trade union that had charged the solicitor to send the case to them.”

Bribing middlemen for work is the first step to full-time, big-time bribery. Get a scruffy office in Tottenham and become a bagman for Halliburton, delivering £100 million in bribes to Nigerian politicians. That’s a business model any Irish property developer would cheerfully take up. In this case it was a solicitor.

Strictly, as a business model it lacks something; the bribes are going in the wrong direction. Christopher Haan, a consultant solicitor knew that. Despite charging his client, Mr Abela £1.4 million in legal fees (on a share purchase), Mr Haan was clandestinely also advising a Mr Baadarani, who was selling his stake in the Italian company to Mr Abela. Mr. Haan got £400,000 from Mr. Baadarani.
“This is not a case of a technical conflict of interest,” Mr Abela’s, counsel told the court, “but of an intentional preferment of one client’s interests over another.”
Mr Haan’s actions, he said, were negligent, deceitful and a breach of contract towards Mr Abela, adding that simultaneously advising the buyer and seller of a company implied fraudulent or negligent misrepresentation.
Mr. Haan may have known what Mr. Seldon, another solicitor, did not know; that you can be pushed into retirement against your will (and will need every cent you can get).

Or, powerful vested interests lodge a complaint with your Regulator and, despite their tendentious objectives (the complainants were the opponents of the solicitor’s clients) you just survive the trial your Regulator puts you through.

Here in Ireland, being a Republic we, in theory, are no respecters of persons. Oops! Not so, perhaps.

In any event Michael Ford a client of Michael Napier, a former President of the Law Society lodged a complaint with the Law Society about Napier. Napier had represented Ford in a long case against Exxon Mobil, but Ford discovered that Napier’s firm had also been acting for Esso, a wholly owned subsidiary of Exxon.

Ford was not pleased about this. How could he now know that Napier did everything he could to vindicate his interests?

The complaint went nowhere fast. Only when it went to the Scottish Legal Complaints Commission did Ford get a hearing. The Commission found that the Law Society’s investigation was a systemic failure.

Too bad.

Under the Prosecution of Offences Act 1974 most criminal prosecutions are in the charge of the Director of Public Prosecutions (“DPP”). Some offences are assigned to other legal persons (e.g. Government Ministers) for processing in prosecution by the statute under which they are created.

In fact most criminal prosecutions are brought by members of the Garda Siochana in the name of the DPP.

Before the 1974 act the prosecutor was the Attorney General. Consequently, it was, before 1974, a social fiction imposed on the nation that the decision to prosecute or not to prosecute was taken by the Attorney General without regard for the fact that he was a highly politicised figure, held his post at the behest of the Taoiseach and was the confidante and counsellor of the Governement and its members.

The DPP has no role in the investigation of crime. He (or she) receives a file from the Garda Siochana. The file contains the available evidence. The DPP decides, on the evidence in the file, to prosecute or not to prosecute and whether to prosecute on indictment (in the Circuit Court or Central Criminal Court) or summarily (in the District Court).

Prosecutions on indictment are “contracted out” to barristers in private practice. It is a valuable connection to be on the panel for work coming from the DPP.

Ideally, such a person would have considerable experience in criminal cases. That experience can be gained only when working in defence of prosecutions (otherwise the prosecution of offences would be placed in the hands of inexperienced practitioners and that, it is submitted, ought not to happen).

Experience, it is hoped, should dampen zealotry. It is not the job of a prosecutor to “win”, but to facilitate in doing justice. The steady presentation of the available evidence is the job of the prosecutor. That evidence must be such that there is left no reasonable doubt as to the guilt of the defendant.

In fact, the DPP has issued “Guidelines for Prosecutors”. stressing the need for the prosecutor to act honestly, fairly, impartially and objectively. The Guidelines enjoin the prosecutors to;

“(k) carry out their functions honestly, fairly,
consistently impartially and objectively
and without fear, favour, bias or prejudice;”

This is fine in theory, but the decision to prosecute is often made in circumstances where the complainant, sometimes inevitably, has a private grudge against the accused. It is, in such circumstances more important than ever that the circumstances in which the prosecutor got his or her experience qualifying him or her to get work from the State, should have no bearing on whether the private grudge can be advanced at the expense of the public purse and at no risk to the complainant and great risk to the accused.

When we insure our property, we conclude a contract of insurance with the insurance company.

The terms of the contract will generally be expressed as a “policy”, a particular name for an insurance contract. Sometimes it is not. There may be no actual policy. There may be a “cover note”. This may or may not refer to standard terms. If it does it is a matter of interpretation whether those “standard terms” form part of the contract.

This can cause difficulty for the insured person, but more often than not, it causes profound difficulties for the insurance company.

In Manor Park Homebuilders v AIG Europe (Ireland) Ltd. [2008] IEHC 174, the court heard evidence that the contract of insurance consisted of one word in an email.

This is good news for lawyers, deo gratias.

Generally, the liability of a solicitor (arising out of his/her professional practise) is unlimited. However, under Section 44 of the Civil Law (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2008, a solicitor may limit his/her liability to a degree not less than the current minimum sum for which a solicitor must carry insurance for (negligence) claims.

That figure is, currently, €1,500,000.

Litigation means a resort to the Courts for resolution of a problem. Wikipedia says the conduct of a lawsuit is litigation.

It also says:

“A lawsuit is a civil action brought before a court of law in which a plaintiff, a party who claims to have received damages from a defendant’s actions, seeks a legal or equitable remedy. The defendant is required to respond to the plaintiff’s complaint. If the plaintiff is successful, judgment will be given in the plaintiff’s favor, and a range of court orders may be issued to enforce a right, award damages, or impose an injunction to prevent an act or compel an act. A declaratory judgment may be issued to prevent future legal disputes.”

We could go on and on and on about the topic, but this is a blog and we should limit ourselves to the practical.

A typical lawsuit has its origins in a Road Traffic Accident. (“an RTA”). A typical RTA will involve two motor cars. The drivers may have bona fide differing opinions of the causes of the accident. One driver may have sustained more damage than the other. These circumstances may drive the lawsuit.

There are other circumstances that drive a lawsuit. Greed can drive it. Desperation can drive it. Lack of scruples (a sub-set of greed) can drive it. Ambition can drive it.

Most lawsuits are settled. The judicial system is under-resourced to adjudicate on every lawsuit filed in court.

The statistics in the Annual report of the Courts Service of Ireland do not properly reflect this. Take the figures for the High Court civil cases in 2008. There were 22,861 proceedings issued in that year. Allegedly the court made 25,734 orders and there were 4,631 settlements. These two latter figures are categorized as “Cases disposed of”.

In truth the figures for commencement of proceedings and cases disposed of are unrelated. This is so notwithstanding that most proceedings would still be in being one year after being issued. The Court Service statistics take no account of cases commenced and then discontinued. These cases, more often than not, have been settled.

The litigants, with the assistance of the legal profession, settle their cases. (At lunch-time outside the Law Library).

The implications of this, for litigants, is profound. It implies the process is a rational process (on the whole). It is rational in the way a game of chess is rational. The rules and principles are sufficiently clear and well known that the outcome can be predicted with greater or lesser certainty. It is the function of the judges to preserve the integrity of the rules and, exceptionally, expand on them.

Nevertheless, litigation is uncertain. That may mean it is uncertain to the extent of 10% or 50%. The burden of proof in civil law is on the balance of probabilities. To win, a litigant must persuade a judge that what is alleged by that litigant is, on balance, more likely than what is contended for by the opponent.

Failure to settle a case, or failure to settle until “the door of the court” may be caused by a failure to assess where the balance in the case lies, or it may be evidence of a deferment of settlement to the day of trial to maximize the compensation discount a defendant would like to get from an injured plaintiff.

Whatever the case, those causes are in principle, also assessable.

England and Wales have taken strange roads in the administration of justice, so it pays to keep an eye on the legal profession there.

What a pleasure then to discover from the new Chairman of the Bar Council [there], in his inaugural address [see it HERE] that, of former Chairmen;

Some were extraordinarily efficient at chairing meetings; some made a point of sending e-mails at 4.30a.m; some were international class gourmands; others had a wonderful oratorical facility.

Are the barristers bonkers? Did they know of the predilection to 4.30 a.m. emails and still vote for that guy? Did they think the gourmand was even going to give them tips on how to get a piece of that lifestyle?

Of course, he may well have done just that, in which case, bring him back!

It is surprising how often the willfulness of lawyers or litigants drives litigation, rather than evidence. We see an instance of this in the “theory” that William Shakespeare did not write the “Shakespearean canon” and that the plays and poems were written by, among others, Francis Bacon. This theory was first advanced by Delia Bacon in a book published in 1857.

The essential element of the book, in explaining its success, was prolixity. A work is prolix if it is too long. It is a general human failing to think that there must be substance to something if it can be written about at length.

At any length, Ms. Bacon’s book was too long.

In this vein, some solicitors and some barristers stand out for an inability to produce short affidavits. They talk all around the problem, avoiding the terms in which the opponent has defined the issues. This may be very good in principle, but it is tiresome in practice and oppressive when the prolix affidavit is sworn in the cause of big institutions, for, in truth, this is a feature of struggles with big institutions; they try to talk the problem away.

In the public service strike, the courts stopped work on Tuesday the 6th of November 2009. This is of less interest than the stoppage of the previous Friday. The judges of the superior courts went to school that day and, of necessity, ceased working. Why was this interesting fact not reported by the media? More importantly, why do we not know the subject of the lessons of the day?

We owe great debts to Montesquieu but he over-egged the pudding when he asserted the primacy of the constitutional principle of the separation of powers. The Executive power will not countenance, and never has, full judicial independence.

Consequently, it is naïve to think a court is not an agent for the application of Government policy, as expressed in law (and sometimes not so expressed).

This may not be the context for the judges’ lessons, but we can hardly think they need refreshers on whether Ms. Donohoe should have won in Donohue v Stevenson [1932] AC 562.

Perhaps they needed a good talking to about the imperative to front-load legal costs on uppity Plaintiffs seeking injunctions?

Or why proposals to re-introduce the death penalty into Ireland ought to be seriously addressed, to distract from current political difficulties?

Or why the current chaos in the Irish legal system, that is the provision of discovery of documents, should persist?

Of course, the lessons may not address these things at all. They may be perfectly standard “continuous professional development” stuff, consisting of a review of recent case law on some theme, say, Tort law.

Either way, it behooves the media to at least ask what is taught at Judge school. It might tell us something about Ireland we need to know, and God knows, we know very little.

The King’s Inns is the only Inn of Court in Ireland. The UK has four; Middle Temple, Inner Temple, Lincoln’s Inn, and Gray’s Inn.

In the King’s Inns the students and Benchers of the Inns eat dinner in the Great Hall of the Inns during term time. Each student diner is supplied with beer and half a bottle of wine (or port). Each Bencher diner is also supplied with those drinks, and brandy or whiskey. In Ireland, every judge of the superior courts is a Bencher of the King’s Inns. In the King’s Inns the last Thursday of each term is “Grand Night”.

The drinks allocation is doubled on “Grand Night”.

The ostensible purpose of the dinners is to follow the tradition by which education was imparted to new barristers; they learned what was what by eating, and conversing, with the practising barristers.

Nowadays, they probably confine themselves to conversation about how bad the Government is, or how fortunate Ireland is to avoid the US experience with the use of the death penalty, as reported HERE by the Guardian.

Of course, by the end of a Grand Night, they may be discussing how good the Cabinet is, (especially the Minister for Finance who is qualified as a barrister) and how the Guardian is not a quality newspaper.

Britain and Ireland have similar, but different, legal systems. In Britain it is permitted for solicitors and barristers to agree to act for no, or a reduced, fee, conditional on being entitled, on winning the case, to charge the client (and a losing opponent) an enhanced fee (one larger than the norm). This is known as “a conditional fee agreement” (CFA).

This is not possible in Ireland.

In Britain, these CFA arrangements are most common in personal injury claims. In Ireland the principal law applicable to such claims and the terms to be agreed between solicitors and clients is S.I. No. 518/2002 — The Solicitors Acts, 1954 To 2002 Solicitors (Advertising) Regulations, 2002

Under the Regulations it is illegal for a solicitor to advertise “No win, no Fee”. Solicitors are not permitted to calculate their fees by reference to a percentage of the compensation recovered for the client. (Or as the Regulations put it, “In contentious business, a solicitor may not calculate fees or other charges as a percentage or proportion of any award or settlement”.

Furthermore, not only are solicitors subject to the foregoing restrictions but are also restricted from offering “legal services involving contentious business… at no cost or reduced cost to the client”

Indeed, it is the obligation of a solicitor to give an estimate of the costs of the legal services to the client in writing, at the commencement of the engagement.

Finally, the Regulations provide, inter alia, advertisements shall not “be published in an inappropriate location”.

(We know for sure that the back of a bus is an inappropriate location).