Dwight St. George Reece

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

Attorney Dwight Reece was found guilty of professional misconduct by the GLC Disciplinary Committee for breaches of Canons IV(r) and (s) - failing over nine years to advance a fatal-accident claim for his client's deceased daughter and failing to keep her informed, resulting in the claim becoming statute-barred. The Committee ordered restitution of J$650,000, costs of J$50,000 to the complainant and J$50,000 to the GLC, and a four-month suspension. The Court of Appeal refused leave to adduce fresh evidence (failing the Ladd v Marshall test) and to argue a supplementary ground challenging the misconduct finding, and dismissed the appeal against sanction, affirming the suspension (commencement varied to 1 September 2021). The court expressly noted the case did not involve dishonesty.

Duties found breached:

• No conflict between current clients
• No taking unfair advantage

Aggravating factors:

• Nine-year period of inaction and failure to communicate progress to a bereaved client
• Inaction allowed limitation periods on two maintainable claims to expire
• Failure to attend Committee hearings and disobedience of orders to file documents
• Failed to put before the Committee any material in mitigation beyond an offer of restitution

Mitigating factors:

• No dishonesty or moral turpitude involved
• Offer of restitution to the complainant
• Some work had been done under the retainer (documents prepared, claim filed though unserved)
• Senior member of the Bar

⚠ figures not found verbatim in the source were dropped: ["unverified_costs_amount=100000"]