Money held in trust by a solicitor for the vulnerable young children of deceased clients was “simply not available” after the lawyer transferred funds from client accounts, a tribunal has found.
Co Roscommon-based Declan O’Callaghan is facing a second round of proceedings to be struck off the roll of solicitors after a new Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal report made damning conclusions about his “egregious professional misconduct” with more than a dozen clients.
Investigations into his firm, Kilrane O’Callaghan Solicitors of Ballaghaderreen, led to his ongoing suspension as a solicitor and the tribunal’s first recommendation last July that he be struck off. That matter remains before the High Court.
Now the tribunal has made further findings, saying O’Callaghan “redoubled” his misconduct as his professional difficulties escalated in 2018.
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In the case of a client who died almost 11 years ago, the man’s estate “has yet to be fully available for the benefit of his infant son” because of the misconduct.
The tribunal went on to cite fabricated documentation purportedly executed by the widow of a man who died in 2017 when blaming the solicitor for money not being available for the couple’s young children.
“The tribunal notes that the respondent solicitor appears to have repeatedly and opportunistically engaged in teeming and lading using client monies, which ought to have been available for vulnerable infant children.”
‘Teeming and lading’ is an expression used to describe efforts to conceal the loss of cash received from one customer by using cash from other customers to replace it.
In the case of another man who had four children under 10 when he died in 2007, the children’s money was not available because of the improper and unauthorised transfer of client funds.
The solicitor was also found to have withdrawn €60,696 of a client’s legal settlement money without her authorisation. He went on to borrow another €150,000 from her, despite knowing he could not repay such a loan “in a timely manner or at all”.
Describing the case of a client who died in 2013, the tribunal found he sent “deliberately misleading” documents to the Alzheimer’s Society about the lapse of a significant bequest. That followed an unauthorised transfer of money that resulted in a client account deficit.
In a €468,000 property transaction, uncashed cheques were retained on file to the extent that money was “floating” between the solicitor’s bank accounts.
Money set aside in a separate property deal to pay stamp duty to the Revenue “was not available”.
Another couple who wanted to use property sale proceeds to repay a debt faced a significant deficit “to the extent that monies which ought to have been available to discharge the indebtedness were not available”.
O’Callaghan was criticised for a lack of candour and honesty. “The Tribunal must have consideration of the fact that the respondent solicitor misled both the Regulation of Practice Committee and the President of the High Court in the context of the preliminary investigations made by the Law Society.”
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