THE PRESIDENT of the High Court has struck off two solicitors, including one who misappropriated €200,000 and left deficits of €600,000 in his client accounts.
In the case of John McGlynn, Castle Street, Athlone, Co Westmeath, which included misappropriation, there was no other possibility but to to strike him off, Mr Justice Richard Johnson said. He was told all the money had been repaid.
He also struck off Kieran McCarthy, a sole practitioner trading as McCarthy and Associates, Douglas, Cork, who was suspended last week for late filing of accounts, after Mr McCarthy yesterday admitted a second offence relating to dealing with a client’s tax liability.
Rejecting a plea not to strike off Mr McCarthy, Mr Justice Johnson said while it may not be the way things were done in other walks of life, solicitors “must remember they are members of a profession, not members of a business, like bankers”. He had discretion as to what penalty to impose and “an obligation to the people of this country to protect them”.
Mr McGlynn admitted 28 offences, including misappropriation of clients’ money and what is known as “teeming and lading”, a system of concealing deficiencies in cash while misappropriating money from one account to another.
The offences were discovered in July 2005 when a Law Society investigation discovered the first of a number of misappropriations by Mr McGlynn.
Mr McGlynn, who qualified in 1994, worked as an assistant solicitor in one firm and a partner in another. He was working as a sole practitioner when the offences were discovered.
Paul Anthony McDermott, for the Law Society, said Mr McGlynn had misappropriated various sums of money, including €106,000 from a client account which was used to discharge a mortgage of another client. Mr McGlynn also falsely entered sums on cheque stubs, including one for the €106,000, and for another two amounts of €65,000 and €30,000, which caused bookkeeping entries to be falsely made.
Mr McDermott said Mr McGlynn had also misappropriated €11,000 from an estate he was entrusted with and used it to buy items for his own new house.
In the second firm, where he was a partner, he obtained €100,000 from a client after pretending he would invest it and get 30 per cent interest after six months, Mr McDermott said. He then misappropriated €92,500 of that money. He had obtained another €100,000 from two other clients on the same false promise of investment and used the money to pay off €100,000 he had misappropriated from another account.
He left deficits of €166,278 when he moved from the first firm he worked for and €484,533 from the second firm while, as a sole practitioner, he had created a deficit of €147,051, most of which had been carried over from his previous practice.
Mr McGlynn gave no real explanation as to what happened to the money, Mr McDermott said. However, with help from family and friends, he had paid it all back and nobody was out of pocket.
His lawyer Seán Sexton told the court it was a “tragic case” in which his client acknowledged he “had let himself, his family and his profession down”.
In the case of Mr McCarthy, the judge rejected an application not to strike him off. He was suspended last week from practising for filing his accounts with the Law Society 17 months too late.
The judge had deferred a decision on whether to lift that suspension until yesterday when he was told that Mr McCarthy had been found guilty of a second offence of a number of failures in relation to the payment of a client’s capital acquisition tax, including telling his client the money had been sent to the Revenue when it had not.
Mr Justice Johnson said he would not allow someone who lied to clients and his own disciplinary body to practise as a solicitor.