Lawyer Michael Lorne escapes striking off as Privy Council sides with Ja Court of Appeal

Attorney Michael Lorne will not be disbarred after the Privy Council today upheld a Jamaican Court of Appeal ruling that the General Legal Council (GLC) was pushing to be overturned.

The GLC is the regulator of the legal profession in Jamaica and the United Kingdom-based Privy Council is the country's final court of appeal. 

The case involves a question of the appropriate sanction to be imposed against an attorney for a serious case of professional misconduct but for which was there was no finding of dishonesty. 

In its ruling Thursday, the Privy Council dismissed the appeal brought by the GLC which was seeking to overturn a 2021 decision by the Court of Appeal that Lorne, who was found guilty of professional misconduct, should not be disbarred but instead suspended for five years.

Attorney-at-Law Bianca Samuels who appeared in person at the Privy Council and represented Lorne in the Court of Appeal is elated .

She said “victory in the Jamaican Court of Appeal was ratified by the Privy Council which held that there being no finding of dishonesty on the part of Michael Lorne, striking him off would be too harsh a punishment and the Court of Appeal's replacement of suspension rather than disbarment was appropriate in all the circumstances.”

Lorne was retained to sell a property at 10 Fairbourne Avenue in eastern Kingston. The complainant and her brother had equal shares.

A report was made to the GLC by the complainant in 2012 that the property was sold in 2011 for $6 million but she did not receive her share of the proceeds.

In response to the allegation, Lorne said he had sent her portion of the proceeds to her brother who had retained him and instructed him to send the proceeds to her.

He was found guilty of professional misconduct in 2017 and was disbarred. He was also ordered to make restitution to the complainant.

Lorne appealed the decision and the Court of Appeal in March 2021 upheld the findings of professional misconduct but varied the sanctions by ordering a five-year suspension.

He was also ordered to obtain a number of credits in Continuing Legal Professional  Development courses before being restored to the roll of attorneys-at-law entitled to practise in Jamaica. The suspension ended in 2022.

The Privy Council was asked to determine whether the striking-off sanction imposed by the Disciplinary Committee of the GLC was an error of law or clearly inappropriate so as to warrant the intervention of the Court of Appeal in setting aside the order and imposing less severe sanctions.

It was also to determine whether in the circumstances of the case, the Court of Appeal ought to have deferred to the decision of the Disciplinary Committee.

In its 24-page decision, the Privy Council said the sanctions imposed were "the consequence of an error of law as the Court of Appeal inferred and that error entitled the Court of Appeal to substitute its own assessment as to the correct sanction". 

The final court also said that with the Court of Appeal having identified the error, "it was entitled to interfere and determine for itself the needed sanction". 

However, the Privy Council ruled that “this was a case of very serious professional misconduct which, depending upon the evaluation of the facts by a disciplinary committee, could justify either a striking off or a significant suspension from practice".

"In such circumstances, it was incumbent on the committee to explain what it was in the case that warranted a striking off rather than a lesser sanction and it did not do so. Instead, its reasons were essentially a description of the conduct as egregious, but no more," the judgment said. 

The Privy Council said it disagreed with two aspects of the reasoning of the Court of Appeal.

It said the court spoke of Lorne's naivety and lack of experience and familiarity with conveyancing and probate.

But the Privy Council said there  was no evidence recorded in the committee's decision to support that view.

It also disagreed with the court's decision that there was no proper basis for treating Lorne's payment of the sums due to the complainant as a significant mitigating factor.

“His failure to honour his undertaking to pay in April 2014 for three years until the eve of the hearing in mitigation compounded the seriousness of his professional lapses," the Privy Council ruled.

Lorne was also convicted in the Kingston and St Andrew Parish Court in October 2020 of fraudulent conversion of the proceeds of sale of the property but in September 2022, the Court of Appeal overturned the conviction.

- Barbara Gayle

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