Lawyer fined £3k over ‘misleading’ advice to family

A Paisley lawyer has been slapped with a £3,000 fine after being found guilty of professional misconduct.

Caroline Goodenough is said to have misled the family of a vulnerable dementia patient over the sale of her house.

A Scottish Solicitors’ Discipline Tribunal hearing was told that Goodenough was hired by the woman’s daughter, who had applied to become her mother’s legal guardian after she was taken into a care home in May 2016.

However, it emerged that the lawyer failed to submit Legal Aid forms to the Scottish Legal Aid Board despite claiming she had.

Goodenough, who has been practising as a lawyer since 1991, then failed to keep up contact with the worried family.

The tribunal was told the family reached out to the Lawyer in February 2017, who incorrectly told them that she was waiting on reports.

Further efforts by the fuming family revealed their case was not being progressed properly, leading to a probe which saw the Goodenough make a number of excuses for her inaction.

She then left the firm in June 2017. She has now been found guilty of professional misconduct by failing to act with trust, integrity, competence and diligence by a Scottish Solicitors’ Discipline Tribunal panel.

Goodenough, who represented herself at the hearing, said it was ‘almost incomprehensible’ she could have behaved the way she did and had ‘no intention’ to mislead.

She blamed ‘very heavy workload’ at the firm because other partners did not have court experience and offered her ‘little’ support for problems in the case.

Vice chair of the panel Kenneth Paterson said: “The tribunal was satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that the respondent had acted in the manner libelled.

“The respondent misled the complainer and the client relations manager regarding progress on the case and whether legal aid had been granted. She failed to act with competence and diligence.

“One incident of misleading could have been a mistake or negligent however, she was given many opportunities to check the file and did not do so.

“Failure to do so was reckless. She repeatedly misled with regard to legal aid and the medical reports when dealing with a client in a sensitive situation.”

She was fined £3,000. Goodenough now works for a Greenock firm.