Managing partner suspended for false and secret billings during old firm’s break-up
Orvel Currie created false documents and secret billings that had the effect of hiding his work in 50-plus matters from his former partners at Winnipeg’s D’Arcy & Deacon LLP
The national managing partner of a western Canadian law firm has been suspended for 30 days by the Law Society of Manitoba after he admitted creating false documents and engaging in secret billing practices as his old firm broke up in late 2016 and early 2017.
Orvel Currie currently heads up DD West LLP – a law firm with offices in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba – but got into trouble over his conduct as the partnership at Winnipeg’s century-old D’Arcy & Deacon LLP hit the rocks.
According to a disciplinary hearing panel decision, Currie joined the storied firm as a partner in 2009, but was among those who planned to leave by the end of 2016 following an earlier exodus of six partners whose departure put the firm’s financial future in jeopardy.
As partners and associates rearranged themselves into three main groups – two new firms and a slimmed down but continuing D’Arcy & Deacon – ahead of their December 31, 2016 divorce, the decision says Currie claimed entitlement to his work in progress accrued late in the year.
However, the request met resistance from many of his then-partners, who insisted they should all be billing their work in progress and outstanding disbursements to the credit of the partnership, which had significant liabilities to discharge by the end of 2016.
Later, the partners would discover that Currie, a corporate-commercial and tax-planning lawyer who is also licensed by the law societies of Ontario and Alberta, had entered two sets of billings in 35 matters on the accounting system shared by the three groups of partners. One set accurately showed the work as performed in 2016, while false duplicates documented the same work as having been done in 2017, when his new firm would be entitled to the payment.
The decision says that the dispute over entitlement to the accounts was eventually settled at arbitration between Currie and his former D’Arcy & Deacon partners.
In 19 further matters covering work done in the final two months of 2016, Currie skipped the accounting system altogether, keeping a secret record of billings before charging the clients in 2017 to the credit of his new firm.
“It appears that the partners of D'Arcy & Deacon LLP likely did not know of this deception at the time of the arbitration but, again, the panel was told that in light of the exchange of releases and the conclusion of the arbitration it was not being pursued,” the disciplinary decision reads.
The panel did not rule on Currie’s intent, but his counsel emphasized at the hearing that he never meant to mislead his partners.
“We find no difficulty in making an inference that the creation of the false billing records was most certainly intended to divert the fees and disbursements to Mr. Currie's new firm and in the absence of any notice to his partners that he was doing this leads to the inevitable conclusion that there was certainly a hope that the diversion of monies would go unnoticed,” the panel’s decision reads. “Mr. Currie's motive, as distinct from his intention, may have been to secure for his new firm what he genuinely believed was his, but it was nonetheless wrong.”
The panel also heard that Currie admitted a second allegation of failing to treat the Court with candour, fairness, courtesy and respect in his failure to make adequate inquiries ahead of an interview with the Court Monitor regarding the firm’s Residential School files, “such that answers he gave to certain questions put to him misled the Court Monitor.”
According to the decision, Currie took delivery of 280 referrals from a company that helped Residential School survivors fill out claim forms on reserves, and then distributed the work to associates at D’Arcy & Deacon.
However, after concerns were raised about the enforceability of directions signed by claimants promising the referring company 15 per cent of their award, the firm began preparing two cheques: one for 85 per cent of the award and another for 15 per cent. Each cheque was made out to the claimant, but in the expectation that they would be amenable to endorsing the second one for the benefit of the referral company, the decision says.
Federal officials in charge of the claims process and the law society each wrote to the firm about the two-cheque scheme before Currie was asked to answer questions posed on behalf of a Court Monitor on the subject in December 2014.
The disciplinary panel noted that Currie pleaded ignorance to many of the questions due to others at the firm handling the files. However, his answer on the two-cheque scheme advised that claimants were putting “pressure” on the firm to pay the referral company, despite an associate telling him two years earlier that he was not aware of any such instances. In addition, Currie told the Court Monitor that the law firm had severed its ties with the referring company after receiving files, which in fact it had sent cheques to the company after their endorsement by claimants.
When it came to the penalty, the panel accepted the 30-day suspension recommended jointly by the parties was appropriate for his “serious transgressions,” acknowledging his previously unblemished disciplinary record over the course of his 32-year career, as well as the “very tense and stressful” backdrop to his billing practices. They also ordered Currie to pay $12,500.00 towards the cost of his investigation and prosecution.
“We were advised that this matter was expected to be contested and would have been had there not been agreement to amend the original citations served upon Mr. Currie. Mr. Currie is entitled to some consideration for admitting what he has, albeit after amendments to the citations, and thus avoiding the necessity of what was expected to be a two-week hearing with several witnesses subject to cross-examination touching on their credibility,” the panel concluded.
“Mr. Currie addressed the panel directly and admitted that with respect to both matters, he ‘could have done better.’ Given his previously unblemished record and the somewhat unique background to the matters before us, we do not see that there is concern that Mr. Currie will find himself again before a panel,” they added.
Currie appears to have recently returned to practice following the suspension, which the panel ordered to start no later than May 15.
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