Thursday, November 09, 2006
[RealEdge] TodayOnline : Not dishonest, just indifferent
 This story was printed from TODAYonline | |
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| Not dishonest, just indifferent Lawyer who placed herself in conflict of interest suspended Thursday ? November 9, 2006 Leong Wee Keat weekeat@mediacorp. A LAWYER was suspended from practice for two years after a Court of Three Judges, the profession's highest disciplinary panel, found "a clear indifference" towards the best interests of her clients. While the judges, including Chief Justice Chan Sek Keong, found there was no evidence of dishonesty, they ruled that Vasantha Vardan, 37, showed "a significant absence of diligence" in discharging her professional duties. The Court also noted "an unhealthy increase" in the number of instances where lawyers have placed themselves in a conflict of interest, or have failed to extricate themselves after finding themselves in such situations. The case surrounding Vardan ? a lawyer since 1994 ? harks back to 1999, when Mr Ibrahim Hassan and Ms Zaharah Ibrahim had gone to her office to sign documents relating to the sale of a flat. Among the documents they signed was a loan advance of $50,000 ? of which Mr Ibrahim received only $25,000 ? from property agent Shaik Raheem, who was also to get a sales commission of $8,080. Although the total due to the property agent was $33,080, Shaik later claimed Mr Ibrahim owed him $55,330. He has since been sentenced to a 22-month jail term. The couple lodged a complaint against Vardan to the Law Society of Singapore in 2001. A disciplinary committee then found that prior to this transaction, Vardan and Shaik had concluded 27 deals together. The pair had met in 1998 and formed a "standing agreement" that if Shaik's clients required legal services, he would introduce them to her. But she had failed to disclose information about this relationship to her clients. Yesterday, the Court said that Vardan had not taken the appropriate steps to extricate herself from the conflict of interest. Instead, she had merely "gone through the motions" of explaining the documents to the couple and failed to take "positive steps" to disclose her relationship to Shaik, given the duo's "lack of legal knowledge and facility in the English language". In reading out the judgment, Justice Andrew Phang said: "Lawyers have a duty generally (and always) to give their respective clients a thorough explanation of all relevant documents set in their appropriate contexts. This is the minimum standard of professionalism which we would expect." | |
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// posted by Shajahan @ 12:07 PM 