THE HIGH Court has struck off a solicitor for professional misconduct over a €1.165 million deficit in his client account.
Charles O’Neill’s practice of Cathal O’Neill and Co, Rathmines, Dublin, was wound up and later taken over by other solicitors after he used his own resources to plug the €1.1 million deficit.
The proceedings against the solicitor followed an investigation by the Law Society which found the deficit arose because there had been a large number of transactions for a single client, a developer, for whom Mr O’Neill paid out cheques on a regular basis.
The Law Society claimed Mr O’Neill was effectively acting as a personal banker for this developer. Mr O’Neill agreed he had not monitored the financial situation in his practice closely enough but denied he had acted as the developer’s personal banker.
Mr O’Neill, through his solicitor Seán Sexton, had asked to be allowed to remain a solicitor although he undertook not to practise.
The president of the High Court, Mr Justice Richard Johnson, yesterday rejected an application to have that position continue and struck Mr O’Neill’s name off the solicitors’ roll.
In a separate case, the judge continued a freezing order until next month on the accounts of Pádraig J Butler of Butler Solicitors, Lower Patrick Street, Kilkenny, after he told the society he had taken certain fees from a client’s estate.