Owen Kirkwood Clunie

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

Attorney Owen K Clunie received $600,000 from a client to be paid to a vendor's attorney in a property purchase, failed to pay it over, and did not refund it despite repeated promises. The Disciplinary Committee found he had misappropriated the funds and acted dishonestly, breaching Canons I(b) and VII(b), and struck him off the roll with restitution and costs. On appeal, the Court of Appeal held that although irregularities in service had been waived (the appellant attended the second sitting and, through counsel, said there was 'no dispute as to the facts'), the Committee erred by imposing sanction without giving the appellant an opportunity to be heard in mitigation, a serious breach of procedural fairness. The allegation of bias was rejected. The Court quashed the sanction and remitted the matter to the Committee for mitigation submissions and re-determination of sanction, awarding the appellant half his costs. The appellant had by then repaid $762,000.

Duties found breached:

• Uphold public trust in the profession
• No improper use of client money