The High Court has ordered solicitor Paul Lambert to be struck from the roll of solicitors after finding that he dishonoured an undertaking connected to a €450,000 loan from ICS Building Society and failed to secure the lender’s first legal charge over a property in Howth.
The judgment, delivered by Kearns P. on 17 July 2015, followed a Law Society of Ireland application under section 37 of the Civil Law (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2008. The Society asked the court to impose a stronger sanction than the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal had recommended. The court granted that request and directed that Lambert be struck off. The judgment does not set out any separate order on costs at this stage.
The tribunal had found professional misconduct in 2012 over the failure to register a first legal charge for ICS, inadequate replies to correspondence from the lender and the Law Society, and allowing a solicitor without a practising certificate to work at Merrion Legal. In July 2014, the tribunal had barred Lambert from practising alone or in partnership, while permitting him to work as an assistant solicitor under an experienced solicitor’s supervision. It also directed him to pay the Society’s costs. The Society sought a strike-off; Lambert accepted the tribunal’s sanction.
The undertaking related to an advance of €450,000 to Lambert. The judgment says the money was to be used to discharge an existing First Active mortgage and secure ICS’s first charge over 9 Dunbo Hill. The court recorded that ICS had suffered the complete loss of the advance and had no first legal charge over the property. Lambert told the tribunal that the funds had gone towards investment properties in Ballymun and Balbriggan, but the judgment says the full explanation remained unclear. A separate ICS claim for judgment on the debt was also before the court; this ruling does not determine that claim.
Lambert attributed his failure to comply to the property market crash and resulting negative equity. The court also considered his handling of correspondence and his failure to fulfil promises to the tribunal that he would make good the shortfall. It rejected as lacking credibility his explanation that David Linehan, who signed the undertaking, had been absent and out of contact. The judgment records that Linehan had no practising certificate in 2006 and that Lambert’s practice had only two solicitors. It also noted a separate 2014 tribunal finding that Lambert had failed to provide an accountant’s report for the year ending 31 December 2011; he had been admonished and advised over that matter.
The court acknowledged the tribunal’s experience and said it had taken account of the mitigation advanced for Lambert. It concluded that the breach’s seriousness, the loss to ICS and the additional aggravating circumstances warranted the Society’s requested sanction.