The Supreme Court has convicted a lawyer from Alicante for keeping 5,500 euros that a client gave him to pay for several expert reports that he did not order and that would have served to demonstrate alleged medical negligence.
The court confirms the penalty of one year in prison and two years of disqualification from practicing law for a crime of misappropriation and another of professional disloyalty. Also, the bug (which you can check here) obliges the lawyer to pay a fine of 3,200 euros and compensate the woman with 11,000 euros for civil liability.
The complainant hired the legal services of the convicted person in 2011 in order to file a financial claim against the Administration. Specifically, she maintained that her husband, sick with leukemia, contracted Hepatitis C as a result of a blood transfusion carried out in a hospital in Valencia and that, due to this disease, he could not undergo a bone marrow transplant and ended up dying in 2008 .
In order to prosecute the case and initiate the corresponding lawsuit, the lawyer requested a provision of funds of 6,200 euros. A money that he promised to dedicate to the minutes of the attorney and the cost of two medical reports.
Causal relationship
In her lawsuit against the hospital, the woman requested 500,000 euros for the death of her husband and another 200,000 euros for the contagion. However, a court only granted him 38,000 euros on understanding that although, indeed, the patient fell ill with Hepatitis by accident, it was not proven that the virus caused his death directly or indirectly. In other words, “the causal relationship” between the two events was not proven.
The Alicante Provincial Court concluded that this judicial result had as its origin the criminal action of the lawyer, who only paid 900 euros to the attorney and never ordered the necessary expert tests, illegally pocketing the rest of the money (5,500 euros).
The lawyer challenged the ruling for alleged violation of the principle of presumption of innocence. In this regard, he stated that he met with several experts in forensic medicine, but that none of them was able to support the thesis of his client. She also explained that if she did not return the provision of funds, it was because she agreed with her to use them to cover her own fees.
However, the Supreme Court rejects the alleged motives and considers that “the plaintiff was unaware that the reports did not exist and, consequently, it had not authorized the appellant to endorse, as fees, the amounts delivered for other purposes.”
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