THE HIGH Court has suspended from practising and frozen the accounts of a midlands solicitor after being informed that a Law Society committee had formed the opinion that he is guilty of dishonesty and misconduct.
The court heard that the Law Society’s complaints and client relations committee, which considers complaints against solicitors, came to that opinion arising out of the solicitor’s alleged “systemic practice” of failing to use money received from the sale of properties to discharge mortgages affecting the properties.
The Law Society claimed yesterday that Eamon Comiskey had been giving the sale proceeds of properties to the vendors and leaving the buyer with an undischarged mortgage on the title.
Mr Justice Eamon de Valera, following an application by the Law Society, granted orders including freezing the bank accounts of Eamon P Comiskey Co Solicitors, a sole practitioner, at Ballycarnan, Portlaoise, Co Laois.
The orders also prevent Mr Comiskey from disposing of any assets in his possession or within his procurement.
The court made further orders including suspending Mr Comiskey’s practising certificate and that he hand over all his records and files and the keys of his offices to the Law Society.
Mr Comiskey did not attend yesterday’s hearing. The court noted that he had expressed “a disinterest” in attending the proceedings which he had been made aware of.
Barrister Paul Anthony McDermott, for the Law Society, said it was seeking the order as a result of a number of complaints made against the solicitor.
He said that in one of the complaints, Mr Comiskey gave a written assurance that a court judgment did not affect a property purchased. However that assurance turned out to be incorrect.
Mr McDermott said that in addition to allegations that Mr Comiskey was not discharging mortgages, it was also claimed that no purchase money at all seemed to be going through his client accounts, yet he seemed to be giving undertakings in respect of the transactions to discharge mortgages from the said purchase money.
Mr McDermott added that it appeared that undertakings to discharge the mortgages were being done by Mr Comiskey but not from funds received in respect of the transaction in question but with other funds. This allegation is known as “teaming and lading of the books”.
The court also heard that a solicitor who carried out an inspection of Mr Comiskey’s files, at his office which he runs from his family home, on behalf of the committee described his records as being a jumble of papers that were so mixed up it was difficult to establish which correspondence related to which transaction.
She concluded that from the information made available to her, some of the transactions carried out by Mr Comiskey were fraudulent and could not be considered proper conveyancing practice.
An investigating accountant for the Law Society found Mr Comiskey’s files to be messy where transactions were hard to follow.
The accountant also concluded that this was a complicated matter which required further investigation and more information.
Several meetings of the Law Society committee were held to consider the complaints, although Mr Comiskey only attended one.
At that meeting, the committee considered Mr Comiskey’s responses to the allegations against him as being “a completely incoherent explanation of events”. He failed to turn up at three subsequent meetings.
One time, Mr Comiskey said he could not attend because he may have been having a heart attack and was sitting in a doctor’s surgery awaiting an ambulance.No medical evidence was ever furnished to suggest that he had heart problems or any other illness. The court heard that Mr Comiskey was compelled to attend a meeting of the committee on July 30th. However, he did not attend, claiming that he had been called as a witness at the Commercial Court.
After reviewing the situation the committee formed the opinion that Mr Comiskey had been guilty of misconduct and decided to refer all four matters to the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal.
Mr Justice De Valera made the matter returnable to next week.