Travis Keith Sturgeon

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

Travis Keith Sturgeon, a Queensland solicitor at Miller Harris in Cairns, was found to have committed professional misconduct on all 12 charges relating to his administration of the estate of Maxwell Downs, where his de facto partner was a beneficiary. He forged the executor's signature on five documents (including purporting to witness one), falsely claimed a beneficiary was terminally ill to expedite release of funds, deleted firm records, and lied to a firm principal about the client's whereabouts, all to hasten distribution of estate funds for his and his partner's property purchase. The Tribunal made express findings of dishonesty, held he was probably permanently unfit to practise, recommended removal from the roll, and ordered him to pay the applicant's costs on the standard basis.

Duties found breached:

• Proper basis for allegations
• Cease acting on client perjury or disobedience
• Disclose referrals, commissions and benefits
• No own-interest conflict
• Handle inadvertently received material
• Prompt accounting and return of money
• No baseless or threatened misconduct report
• Good faith and courtesy to colleagues

Aggravating factors:

• Course of dishonest conduct rather than a single lapse
• Conduct motivated by personal pecuniary advantage for himself and his de facto partner
• Compounding forgery by purporting to witness the forged signature
• Deliberate deletion of records and repeated lies to a firm principal to conceal conduct
• Failure to file mitigating material and active disengagement from the disciplinary proceedings

Mitigating factors:

• No prior disciplinary history
• Conduct occurred over a relatively short period (18 December 2015 to 7 January 2016)