Harbinder Singh Sangha

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

The respondent, an equity partner at William Heath & Co, deliberately overcharged conveyancing clients for disbursements and transferred the excess (totalling £25,493.07) to the office account, creating fictitious letters and bills on client files. He also charged disbursements (£1,254) from his own property purchase to a client's ledger. He admitted the facts but denied dishonesty, relying on psychiatric reports. The Tribunal found he acted with conscious impropriety and was dishonest, and struck him off the Roll, ordering him to pay agreed costs of £12,000.

Duties found breached:

• No improper use of client money
• No improper solicitation or touting

Aggravating factors:

• Initial overcharge to clients was deliberate
• Created letters and bills that were never sent to clients, then admitted being untruthful to the SIO
• Charged his own personal property purchase disbursements to a client's ledger
• Breach of trust over client funds as an equity partner

Mitigating factors:

• Suffered from a deep-seated, longstanding psychiatric illness at the time of the breaches
• Marital and accommodation difficulties
• Cooperated and admitted the facts
• No savings or assets and little prospect of remunerated work
• Proceedings had been hanging over him since October 2003
• Properly agreed the quantum of costs