ARTHUR METAXAS

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

The State Administrative Tribunal (WA) found practitioner Arthur Metaxas engaged in unsatisfactory professional conduct by commencing, serving, maintaining and prosecuting Supreme Court proceedings under s 11(3)(b) of the Commercial Arbitration Act that were doomed to fail because the parties had agreed an appointment process. In the liability decision the Tribunal expressly found his evidence about his intentions was not entirely honest and was 'disingenuous', and this dishonesty finding was taken into account at penalty. Although the applicant sought a six-month suspension, the Tribunal imposed a public reprimand and a $24,000 fine (equal to the penalty in his earlier professional misconduct matter), plus costs of $13,816 payable to the Legal Practice Board. A request to stay the penalty pending appeal was refused.

Duties found breached:

• Competence
• No baseless or threatened misconduct report

Aggravating factors:

• Second disciplinary finding against the practitioner and similarity of the conduct to earlier professional misconduct
• Conduct occurred very shortly after the earlier disciplinary decision (delivered 26 April 2018)
• Lack of insight and lack of remorse
• Finding that the practitioner did not give an entirely truthful/honest account in his evidence on crucial matters
• Practitioner's long experience (over 40 years) in commercial litigation made the failure more serious

Mitigating factors:

• Pro bono work and general community engagement (weighed only to a small degree)
• No negative impact on his client - he paid the opposing party's costs order and did not charge his client for the application