MARTIN LEE SEGLER

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

Solicitor Martin Lee Segler was found guilty of professional misconduct for advising his client Mr Vallelonga that he 'ought' to continue building projects while unregistered, thereby effectively encouraging him to breach s 4 of the Builders' Registration Act, and of unsatisfactory professional conduct for giving the Complaints Committee a deliberately misleading response that falsely asserted a complaint had been referred to the CCC. The Tribunal found this involved a substantial failure to reach a reasonable standard of competence (professional misconduct under s 403(1)(a)) but did not make an express finding of dishonesty. On penalty, the Tribunal suspended his practising certificate for three months for the professional misconduct and two months (concurrent) for the unsatisfactory professional conduct, both commencing 60 days from the order, and ordered him to pay costs of $9,674.

Duties found breached:

• Disclose adverse law to the court
• Uphold public trust in the profession
• Good faith and courtesy to colleagues

Aggravating factors:

• Prior disciplinary history (findings of unprofessional conduct in 2001, 2003 and 2009)
• Lack of remorse and lack of insight into the unacceptable nature of his conduct
• Continued attempts to justify the advice given
• Failure to comply with Tribunal directions and repeated adjournments causing delay and expense
• Perpetuation of the misleading information in later correspondence

Mitigating factors:

• No client or member of the public suffered actual loss, damage or inconvenience
• Severe financial impact of suspension on the practitioner (sole practitioner supporting family)
• Complaints Committee limited its costs claim to disbursements only

⚠ figures not found verbatim in the source were dropped: ["review_dishonesty_finding_cue_present"]