Nedumaran Muthukrishnan
Findings — machine-extracted (anthropic-batch:claude-opus-4-8); verify against the decision
The Court of 3 Supreme Court Judges found the respondent, an advocate and solicitor of 25 years' standing, guilty on the First Charge (dishonestly misleading his client over four weeks into believing cheques would be paid out to nominated recipients when he had no intention of doing so) and the Third Charge (failing to inform his client of the basis on which fees would be charged). The court acquitted him on the Second and Fourth Charges after accepting the Law Society's concession that the disputed Sum of S$160,395.96 legally belonged to the respondent (as solicitor and client costs under the Motor Vehicles (Third-Party Risks and Compensation) Act), and was not client's money. The court made an express finding of dishonesty on the First Charge but declined the presumptive striking-off sanction because there was no misappropriation of client money and no actual harm. It imposed a four-year suspension effective 4 July 2024, ordered costs of OA 14 at S$12,000 inclusive of disbursements, and let the DT's costs order (S$10,000 plus disbursements) stand.
Duties found breached:
Aggravating factors:
- Protracted deception repeated continually over some four weeks, not a one-off incident
- Respondent was a solicitor of 25 years' standing at the material time
- Conduct revealed a defect in character; potential harm to complainant (risk of being sued and reputational damage)
- Deception was calculated to annoy/irritate the client as retribution
Mitigating factors:
- No actual harm caused to the complainant
- Dishonesty did not affect the administration of justice or any third party
⚠ figures not found verbatim in the source were dropped: ["unverified_suspension_months=48"]