Nedumaran Muthukrishnan

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

The respondent, an advocate and solicitor of 25 years' standing, faced four charges arising from his handling of costs (the 'Sum' of S$160,395.96) received in motor vehicle personal injury suits. The Court of 3 Supreme Court Judges accepted the Law Society's concession that under the Motor Vehicles (Third-Party Risks and Compensation) Act the Sum belonged to the respondent (as solicitor and client costs approved by the Public Trustee), not the client. Accordingly the 2nd Charge (dishonesty re client money) and 4th Charge (breach of Solicitors' Accounts Rules re client money) were not made out and the respondent was acquitted. The Court convicted him on the 1st Charge, finding he dishonestly and repeatedly misled his client over four weeks into believing he had or would post/hand-deliver cheques to the client's nominated payees when he had no intention of doing so, motivated by anger/frustration and a wish to 'piss off' the client. The Court also convicted on the 3rd Charge for failing to inform the client of the basis of charging fees (no letter of engagement, only one invoice in 2013). As the dishonesty did not involve client money and caused no actual harm or harm to the administration of justice, the presumptive striking-off sanction did not apply. The Court imposed a four-year suspension effective 4 July 2024, plus costs of S$12,000 inclusive of disbursements for OA 14 and let the DT's costs order (S$10,000 plus disbursements) stand.

Duties found breached:

• No abuse of process or coercive powers
• Honesty
• Costs and fee transparency to client

Aggravating factors:

• Protracted dishonesty repeated continually over some four weeks, not a one-off incident
• Solicitor of 25 years' standing at material time
• Deception calculated to annoy/irritate client as retribution
• Potential harm to complainant (risk of being sued, reputational damage)

Mitigating factors:

• No actual harm caused to complainant
• Dishonesty did not affect administration of justice or any third party
• Respondent no longer practising since 2020