SUKHWANT SINGH

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

Sukhwant Singh, a partner at Friedman Lurie Singh & D'Angelo, was the supervising practitioner on a personal injuries claim for Mrs Deen. The claim settled including a $15,000 general damages component, but Mrs Deen died before court approval of the compromise. Neither the court nor the defendant (ICWA) was told of her death, so the general damages (not recoverable after death under s4(2) of the Law Reform (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1941) were paid. When ICWA later sought repayment and appealed, Singh delayed notifying the client and responding to opposing solicitors for about two and a half months, and demanded/received the firm's costs of the appeal from the client when the firm should have borne those costs (which he later refunded). The Tribunal found all four allegations of unprofessional conduct established, holding Singh actually or constructively knew the firm's failure caused the situation. No dishonesty was found. The Tribunal deferred penalty, stating it would hear the parties on penalty.

Duties found breached:

• Non-discriminatory acceptance and cab-rank
• No baseless or threatened misconduct report
• Good faith and courtesy to colleagues