Decision record
Mackey, John Charles
Allegation / charges
The Respondent Solicitor made unauthorised withdrawals of commission in breach of his fiduciary duty to the beneficiaries of two deceased estates. In particular, the Respondent Solicitor: a. made calculations and payments of commission that were not authorised by the respective testator’s wills (and without accounts being passed and the Court determining the amount of commission); b. failed to obtain the prior informed consent of all the beneficiaries prior to withdrawals for commission; and c. failed to provide the beneficiaries with sufficient information to allow them to make an informed decision about the payment of commission. — Unsatisfactory Professional Conduct
Findings — machine-extracted (anthropic-batch:claude-opus-4-8); verify against the decision
The Respondent Solicitor made unauthorised withdrawals of commission from two deceased estates in breach of his fiduciary duty to beneficiaries, calculating and paying commission not authorised by the wills or the Court, without informed consent or adequate information to beneficiaries. This was found to constitute Unsatisfactory Professional Conduct. No express finding of dishonesty was made, and no sanction is stated in the provided text.
Duties found breached:
- Disclose referrals, commissions and benefits
- No conflict between current clients
- No improper use of client money
⚠ figures not found verbatim in the source were dropped: ["extracted_from_register_summary"]
Duties engaged
Documents
No documents recorded.
Source: https://portal.olsc.nsw.gov.au/dasearchbn/daresultdetail/?id=2d84a90f-0454-497b-b627-8c75c812783b