Derek Achong

A lawyer, who with­held more $100,000 in com­pen­sa­tion from a client whose son died in a car crash, is fac­ing 60 days in prison if she does not re­pay the mon­ey by the end of this month. 

High Court Judge Frank Seep­er­sad gave the ul­ti­ma­tum to at­tor­ney Kathy-Ann Mot­t­ley when he up­held a com­mit­tal or­der ap­pli­ca­tion brought by her for­mer client Wendy Phillip at the Hall of Jus­tice in Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day.

Ac­cord­ing to the ev­i­dence in the case, Phillip re­tained Mot­t­ley when she filed a law­suit over the death of her son, Ka­reem Richard, sev­er­al years ago. Phillip even­tu­al­ly ob­tained a de­fault judge­ment and re­ceived over $360,000 in com­pen­sa­tion. 

She brought a pro­fes­sion­al mis­con­duct com­plaint against Mot­t­ley af­ter the at­tor­ney with­held $113,000 of the pay­ment she re­ceived on Phillip’s be­half. 

In June 2017, the Dis­ci­pli­nary Com­mit­tee of the Law As­so­ci­a­tion up­held Phillip’s claim and fined Mot­t­ley $10,000. Mot­t­ley was al­so or­dered to clear her debt to Phillip. 

Mot­t­ley ap­pealed the de­ci­sion, but as the ap­peal was about to be heard by Ap­pel­late Judge Mark Mo­hammed in De­cem­ber 2018, she with­drew it and agreed to pay the mon­ey in two in­stal­ments. Mot­t­ley was al­so or­dered to pay the $4,000 in le­gal costs Phillip in­curred in de­fend­ing the ap­peal. 

In May, last year, Mot­t­ley paid $10,000 as she claimed that she was in the process of sell­ing a par­cel of land to clear the debt. Af­ter the dead­line for mak­ing the fi­nal in­stal­ment elapsed, Phillip brought the ap­pli­ca­tion un­der Sec­tion 3(2)(d) of the Debtors Act to have Mot­t­ley im­pris­oned over her fail­ure to abide by the agree­ment. 

Pre­sent­ing sub­mis­sions on Phillip’s be­half, her new lawyer Brent Win­ter sug­gest­ed that Seep­er­sad give her a sus­pend­ed one-month sen­tence to com­pel to pay. 

“We re­al­ly just want the fruits of our judge­ment and no more,” Win­ter said, as he claimed his client chose not to ap­ply to the Law As­so­ci­a­tion to have her prac­tis­ing cer­tifi­cate sus­pend­ed un­til the is­sue is re­solved. 

In his oral judge­ment, Seep­er­sad not­ed that Mot­t­ley had been aware of the sta­tus of Phillip’s le­gal pro­ceed­ings and of the con­se­quences of fail­ing to abide by the agree­ment. 

Seep­er­sad sug­gest­ed that the case high­light­ed the need for stricter reg­u­la­tion of the le­gal pro­fes­sion, in­clud­ing con­tin­gency fees for lit­i­ga­tion, where­by le­gal fees are de­pen­dent on an at­tor­ney’s suc­cess in a case. 

He al­so sug­gest­ed that at­tor­neys be re­quired to par­tic­i­pate in ethics sen­si­ti­za­tion be­fore be­ing al­lowed to re­new their prac­tis­ing cer­tifi­cates an­nu­al­ly. 

“What a lawyer learns in school is clear­ly not suf­fi­cient to men­tor an eth­i­cal ap­proach to prac­tice through­out his ca­reer,” Seep­er­sad said. 

Mot­t­ley has un­til March 2 to pay the mon­ey, oth­er­wise, Phillip will ap­ply for her to be ar­rest­ed and serve the term of im­pris­on­ment. 

As part of his judge­ment, Seep­er­sad or­dered Mot­t­ley to pay an ad­di­tion­al $7,500 in le­gal costs which Phillip had to in­cur for bring­ing the sub­se­quent le­gal chal­lenge. 

Al­though Mot­t­ley was no­ti­fied of the hear­ing, she was not present and did not send le­gal rep­re­sen­ta­tion.