Pallichadath Gopalan Nair

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

Gopalan Nair, a non-practising advocate and solicitor residing in the USA, was subject to disciplinary action under s 82A of the Legal Profession Act on five charges: abusing police officers with vulgar and racist language, disorderly behaviour, and three charges relating to contempt of court through blog posts insulting Justices Belinda Ang and Judith Prakash and deliberately breaching an undertaking to remove offending posts. The Disciplinary Tribunal found him guilty of all five charges. GN did not attend the High Court hearing. The court found due cause and held he lacked the necessary attributes of character and trustworthiness for a legal practitioner, with no mitigating circumstances. He was struck off the roll and ordered to pay costs to the Law Society. No express finding of dishonesty was made; the striking off was based on his lack of integrity and egregious misconduct.

Duties found breached:

• Disclose adverse law to the court
• No improper communication with the court
• No taking unfair advantage
• No unlawful discrimination or harassment

Aggravating factors:

• Racist outburst directed at a police officer
• Deliberate and defiant breach of undertaking to the court after leaving Singapore, with admission he never intended to comply
• Contemptuous disrespect towards judges in the 3rd, 4th and 5th charges
• Complete lack of remorse or contrition
• Repeated misconduct even after being imprisoned for contempt