Mick Clifford: When a solicitor you trust fails to look after your best interests

The High Court this week heard the latest of complaints against solicitor John Moylan

John Moylan at the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal in 2022. Picture: Gareth Chaney/Collins

Basil and Rose Fitzsimons had not envisaged their later years turning out like this.

The couple had a dispute with a bank over a loan agreement going back 20 years. They had a solicitor, somebody in whom they could trust to look after their best interests.

However, as the High Court heard this week, the solicitor, John Moylan from Mallow, Co Cork, was not who he had advertised himself to be.

The Fitzsimons would come to the conclusion that whosever interests he was looking after, it certainly wasn’t theirs.

This was just the latest of complaints involving Mr Moylan that has come before either the High Court or the regulatory bodies for solicitors.

The court was told that the couple’s travails with the bank nominally ended in 2012.

Six years earlier, ACC had acquired a judgement against them to a value in excess of €200,000.

By 2012, the disagreement over the loan had been settled in the couple’s favour and they were awarded their costs. At this point, if not earlier, it appears that Mr Moylan’s duties to his clients fell into disrepair.

The court was told that despite the win in court, the bank subsequently had not “signed off on this”. They repeatedly contacted Mr Moylan about the matter but their “telephone calls were unanswered and not returned”.

The couple were “advanced in years and wanted to get their affairs in order”. The situation was so shabby that the bank erroneously registered a charge against a property owned by the couple’s son.

This persisted, resulting in the couple reflecting that “they could have retired 20 years earlier but instead were struggling to continue to farm their lands in their old age”, the court was told.

The case was before the High Court because the Legal Services Regulatory Authority (LSRA) was asking that Mr Moylan be directed to comply with a ruling it had recommended.

The couple had made a complaint to the LSRA in December 2023, and repeated letters sent from the authority to Mr Moylan had gone unanswered.

Mr Justice David Barniville said it was regrettable that Mr Moylan had “put his head in the sand” about the case, and ordered him to finalise it and to pay the couple €1,500 in compensation.

The case was the latest of a series involving Mr Moylan’s practice in which former clients have made complaints about how he handled their business.

John Moylan is the principal of Richard Moylan and Co, a firm founded by his father at Shortcastle in Mallow. Mr Moylan began working in the practice when he was just 16 years of age and he qualified as a solicitor in 1977. He is now 72.

Past problems 

Earlier this month, in a different case, the High Court was told that the LSRA was “concerned that there is a real threat to the public and the reputation of the [solicitor’s] profession” if Mr Moylan were to continue practising.

That case concerned a complaint over how, in 2020, the solicitor failed to execute an enduring power of attorney (EPA) process for a 94-year-old man with dementia so that the man’s granddaughter could look after his affairs when he became unable to do so.

Patrick Barrett required round-the-clock care and the failure to execute the EPA meant that he was left with bills of up to €19,000 for his care, which he was unable to pay. 

A hearing into the complaint at the LSRA last July heard that his continued stay at the nursing home was only possible because the facility was willing to accommodate him.

Mr Barrett’s granddaughter, Jacqui Owens, told the hearing that the whole affair had been very upsetting for her.

It left me in a situation where I did not know what would happen to my granddad.

Ms Owens spent six months chasing Mr Moylan before she went to the LSRA to make a complaint.

She said she was “exhausted, frustrated, and fed up of being led astray and not being told the truth”.

The LSRA then had trouble making contact with Mr Moylan and referred the matter to the Legal Practitioners Disciplinary Tribunal which ruled that he should compensate Ms Owens and pay the legal costs for the whole process, amounting to around €15,000.

The High Court was told on October 9 that a recommendation that Mr Moylan be suspended for a period was no longer being sought as he had indicated “he planned to wind down his practice”. Mr Barrett, the court heard, died earlier this year.

The most dramatic aspect to Mr Moylan’s recent travails involved him being arrested in Mallow at his offices last November and brought to Dublin to appear before the High Court. The matter concerned his failure to produce the deeds to a house understood to be worth €1.7m.

The client was a woman who had gone through an acrimonious divorce from her husband, who had been abusive and had received a prison sentence for assault causing harm and threatening to kill.

The woman wanted to sell the home so she could break ties with her husband by the time he was released from custody. She went to a different solicitor who, after a protracted period, got her file from Mr Moylan. However, he still didn’t produce the house deeds.

Following an application to the court in Dublin, Mr Moylan was arrested four days later and brought to the court which was to determine whether he should be imprisoned. He committed to producing the deeds and the following week the court was told that he had finally done so.

While the above issues all occurred in recent years, another serious case dated from over 25 years ago.

Mr Moylan was a solicitor for a property developer based in Mallow, Billy O’Flynn and his wife Deirdre. Mr O’Flynn got involved in property during the Celtic Tiger and after a trend he bought and sold a number of properties.

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His wife, a schoolteacher, was named as a director of the family company but she was unaware of the extent of her husband’s business and how he was conducting it.

On a whole series of deals, and applications for loans, Ms O’Flynn’s signature was forged, entirely without her knowledge, by her husband.

The company solicitor, Mr Moylan, or an associate, between 1997 and 2011, claimed to have witnessed on 18 documents Ms O’Flynn signing her name 22 times.

All of this was kept from Ms O’Flynn until her husband’s business collapsed and she was informed of the extent of the losses, which included the prospect at one point of losing the family home.

Mr O’Flynn relocated to England but Ms O’Flynn pursued a complaint against Mr Moylan over the false use of her signature.

After the Law Society initially failed to deal with the complaint, she represented herself at the High Court to pursue it before the matter eventually came before the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal.

After a hearing, the tribunal found him guilty of misconduct and ordered him to pay €15,000 to a solicitor’s fund and another €15,000 to Ms O’Flynn’s costs.

In response to a query, Mr Moylan issued a statement where he stated that in relation to the O'Flynn case: "I accepted the penalty imposed and same was discharged in full".

He stated that the other two cases "have not been fully resolved". He did not answer a question about whether he was winding down his practice, as heard in the High Court this week.

Since 2020, complaints against solicitors and barristers are made to the independent Legal Service Regulatory Authority. This was a reform from the previous regime where the respective regulatory bodies organized disciplinary hearings at a remove from the bodies themselves.

Where necessary, the LSRA refers matters involving alleged misconduct to the separate Legal Practitioners Disciplinary Tribunal.

In 2024, 57 complaints out of a total of 1,474 which were closed that year were referred to the tribunal.

In 18 cases, such as the one involving Mr Moylan this week, the LSRA made applications to the High Court to have orders enforced.