QCAT fine after offences unearthed Lawyer just too taxing

A TOWNSVILLE lawyer has been publicly reprimanded and ordered to pay a fine for professional misconduct.

Michael Arthur Fellows was ordered by the Queensland Civil Administrative Tribunal to pay a pecuniary penalty of $ 6000 and the Legal Services Commissioner’s costs of $ 4000 within 42 days.

Fellows faced the disciplinary action after it was discovered he had convictions for various tax offences in 2001, 2006 and 2011.

The barrister in private practice in Townsville admitted that his conduct had been “unprofessional”.

Fellows had to lodge income tax returns for 1998 and 1999 and pleaded guilty in the Magistrates Court in Townsville to two offences on March 13, 2001, and was convicted and fined $ 2000.

He also failed to lodge income tax returns for the 2002, 2003 and 2004 financial years.

On February 27, 2006, he pleaded guilty in the Magistrates Court in Townsville to each offence and was convicted and fined $ 5000.

He failed to lodge GST returns for the September and December quarters in 2010 and the March quarter in 2011.

On September 5, 2011, he pleaded guilty to each offence in magistrates court in Townsville and was convicted and fined $ 15,000.

The Legal Services Commissioner said Fellows’ repeated conduct constituted a “consistent failure to maintain a reasonable standard of competence and diligence and can only be categorised as professional misconduct”.

Justice Martin Burns said no satisfactory explanation had been given by Fellows for his repeated defaults.

“True it is that he was involved in a busy regional practice ( involving, as it did, much travel away from his chambers), but that affords no warrant for neglecting his statutory obligations on so many occasions,’’ he said.

“His ( Fellows) failure to do so reflects very poorly on him and tarnishes the reputation of the wider profession.”

Justice Burns noted the commissioner had relied on the conduct for which Fellows was convicted, as opposed to the convictions that followed, to ground each of the charges.

Fellows started in the legal profession as a solicitor on February 5, 1980, and was called to the bar on September 20, 1993.