The Court of Appeal has dismissed John Colm Murphy’s appeal against a High Court refusal to extend the time for him to challenge a 1999 finding of professional misconduct by the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal (SDT). The court did not decide whether it had jurisdiction to extend the statutory appeal period; it proceeded on the merits, as the High Court had done.
The SDT found Mr Murphy guilty in 1999 of failing to file an accountant’s report for his Killarney practice in a timely manner or at all. It censured him and ordered him to pay the Law Society of Ireland’s costs. The tribunal acquitted him of a separate allegation that he misled the Society. Mr Murphy did not appeal within the 21-day period then provided by law.
The dispute concerned a practice Mr Murphy acquired from solicitor Tim Healy in August 1996. Mr Murphy maintained that he was responsible for accounts covering the eight months after he took over, not the preceding four months. The Court of Appeal noted that the Society later accepted a qualified report covering the eight-month period, filed in January 1999. The Society’s registrar subsequently accepted in evidence that its original request should have been for eight months.
Mr Murphy sought an extension in 2020, relying in part on a 1997 letter from the Society to Mr Healy, copied to Mr Murphy, about a closing accountant’s report for the period before the practice was acquired. Mr Murphy said the letter had not been disclosed to him or the SDT and would have provided a complete defence. In earlier plenary proceedings, the High Court found that the evidence did not establish that the Society had decided to withhold the letter or acted with an ulterior motive. The Court of Appeal rejected Mr Murphy’s contention that he was no longer alleging deliberate concealment.
The appeal court accepted that it was arguable that the letter might have affected the SDT hearing. But it said the charge concerned failure to file any report, and Mr Murphy could have raised the eight-month issue at the 1999 hearing without the letter. His accountant, Kevin O’Reilly, was available to give evidence but was not called.
The court also pointed to conflicting and uncertain recollections about alleged conversations between O’Reilly and the Society’s registrar over whether a qualified report would be accepted. With no transcript of the SDT hearing, the passage of time created a significant risk of prejudice. The court concluded that any arguable error did not establish injustice sufficient to overcome the delay and prejudice, and dismissed the appeal.
The Society was provisionally awarded its appeal costs. Mr Murphy may apply within 14 days for a short further hearing on costs. The judgment was delivered electronically on 9 December 2021.