Lawyer’s evidence ‘inherently implausible’

A lawyer’s claim that he did not know his firm’s trust account was overdrawn has been dismissed as ‘‘inherently implausible’’.

Napier lawyer Richard Hill was last year convicted on a representative charge of criminal breach of trust. He was sentenced to eight months of home detention and 100 hours of community work.

Hill, 71, appealed the decision to the Court of Appeal, claiming Judge Michael Crosbie had come to an unreasonable verdict. He felt there had been a miscarriage of justice because the judge had not applied the required burden and standard of proof.

Between October 2003 and June 2005, while Hill was a trustee of client funds in the McKay Hill trust account, he dishonestly took funds from the account and used them to pay wages and expenses.

Hill formed McKay Hill with Gerald McKay in 1985. He retired in 2006.

The New Zealand Law Society intervened in 2010, at which stage the firm’s trust account was more than $1 million overdrawn.

McKay was last year jailed for 41⁄2years after being found guilty of theft, using a document for pecuniary advantage, and criminal breach of trust. Hill claimed he never knew that the account was overdrawn.

In a decision released yesterday, the Court of Appeal said: ‘‘The effect of Mr Hill’s evidence was that he never once found out for himself, in a 21-month period, what the balance of the firm’s interest was and whether the firm had sufficient float on hand to, say, pay client disbursements or to cover the non-arrival of anticipated payment from or for a client or to check that the firm could pay the partner’s drawings that month.

‘‘We agree with the judge that Mr Hill’s evidence was inherently implausible,’’ the court ruled.