CORRIN LINDSAY CAINE

Findings — machine-extracted (anthropic-batch:claude-opus-4-8); verify against the decision

Under the Legal Profession Act 2008 (WA), the WA State Administrative Tribunal found former practitioner Corrin Lindsay Caine guilty of unsatisfactory professional conduct on two of five grounds: (1) continuing to act as counsel for his client after she gave evidence he knew to be false, without seeking her instructions to correct it (allowing the court to be misled, though found to be an error of judgment not deliberate); and (2) writing a letter suggesting a witness confer with other witnesses to make their evidence consistent. The other three grounds (counsel-as-witness, attempting to mislead the Complaints Committee, and false witness statement) were not established; the tribunal expressly accepted he did not intend to mislead and found no dishonesty or wrongful intent. On penalty, he was fined $4,000 on each ground (total $8,000), reprimanded on both, and ordered to pay $10,000 costs within 28 days. The tribunal noted a suspension would ordinarily be appropriate for the misleading-the-court ground but his permanent retirement reduced the need for public protection.

Duties found breached:

• Cease acting on client perjury or disobedience
• No tampering with or coaching witnesses

Aggravating factors:

• Conduct went to the heart of the administration of justice (misleading the court)
• No acknowledgement or insight into failure to maintain proper standards (per Committee submissions)

Mitigating factors:

• No prior disciplinary record over a long career (admitted 1967)
• Retired from practice, reducing need for public protection
• Isolated single incidents rather than a sustained course of misconduct
• First ground characterised as an error of judgment rather than deliberate misleading
• Practitioner conceded prudent course would have been to seek instructions and that the letter's wording was inappropriate
• Delay/effect on recall given events dated back to 1995

⚠ figures not found verbatim in the source were dropped: ["unverified_fine_amount=8000", "review_dishonesty_finding_cue_present"]