By Barbara Gayle, Staff ReporterA DISBARRED lawyer was successful in his appeal on Tuesday when the Court of Appeal ruled that he should instead be suspended for two years.
He is Montego Bay-based attorney-at-law Kenneth McLeod. The Disciplinary Committee of the General Legal Council held a hearing and ruled on July 25 last year that McLeod should be struck off the roll of attorneys-at-law eligible to practise in Jamaica. The Committee found that he was guilty of professional misconduct.
The Court of Appeal comprising Mr. Justice Henderson Downer, Mr. Justice Seymour Panton and Mr. Justice Algernon Smith, after hearing legal arguments from attorney-at-law Leonard Green, set aside the order disbarring McLeod and substituted an order for suspension. The court ruled that the two-year suspension should run from November 16, 2002.
ALTERNATE SANCTIONS
Mr. Green argued several grounds of appeal, one of which was that the committee failed to avail itself of alternate sanctions to the drastic and harsh penalty of disbarring McLeod. Mr. Green submitted that the committee's finding that McLeod failed to account for monies in his possession, although reasonably required so to do at the time of the commencement of the proceedings, was unfounded.
A complaint was made to the General Legal Council that in 1997, the lawyer for the prospective purchaser of a property in Ironshore, St. James, had paid a deposit of $1 million to McLeod who was the vendor's lawyer. The agreement fell through and the purchaser requested the deposit. Despite several letters from as far back as June 1998 from the purchaser's lawyers for the refund, McLeod did not repay the money until May, 1999. A complaint was also made to the General Legal Council which had a hearing last year and found that there was considerable delay in repaying the money. The committee said there was no justification for McLeod's failure to refund the money.
McLeod had said at the hearing that he was in constant communication with the purchaser and it was his honest belief that the sale was still to go ahead and the prospective purchaser was prepared to wait.
