STRUCK OFF

Evening Star, Issue 20913, 2 October 1931, Page 7

STRUCK OFF

BARRISTER DISBARRED [Per United Press Association.] WELLINGTON, October 2. The Court of Appeal delivered its reserved decision in the case of the Law Society v. William Fallon, of Auckland, this morning. An order was made striking Fallon off tho rolls of barristers and solicitors and for the payment of £ls 15s costs and disbursements to the Law Society. Tho Chief Justice, in delivering judgment, said it was impossible to resist tho conclusion that tho practitioner at tho times when he received the moneys from his accountant knew they .were not tho property of his Jinn, but were payments to him out of trust moneys. [The grounds of the application were that Fallon had mixed trust and personal funds in one account and had drawn on that; account for his private purposes amounts in excess of what lie was entitled to draw. It was stated that tho irregularities complained of took place between 1923 and 1931, whilst Fallon was in partnership with one Mason. Mason, however, had been entirely ignorant of what was taking place, and had for iris part been scrupulously careful as to tho amounts which ho drew from the trust account. Mr L. P. Leary, who appeared for tho practitioner, said the system of banking and bookkeeping, which had led to the confusion had been instituted twenty years ago by a public accountant, not by Fallon, who knew nothing of bookkeeping. The difficulty had arisen from the fact that Fallon relied on his accountant, who always told him that the trust account was square, and who, out of a mistaken sense of loyalty, had falsified the books and forged an audicertificate. At no time was tho solicitor aware that ho was overdrawing tho amount duo to him in tho trust account. Tho amount of tho deficiency in tho trust account had been made good by tho two partners.J