The Superior Court of Justice of Extremadura (TSJEx) has confirmed the conviction for fraud and professional disloyalty of a lawyer who charged 18,000 euros to a client and then took four years to present the lawsuit for which he had been hired, which, in addition, it had to be archived due to defects in form.
The court of the Civil and Criminal Chamber has thus confirmed the sentence of the Provincial Court of Cáceres that last March sentenced him for these crimes to 11 months in prison, three and a half years of special disqualification from practicing law , and ordered him to pay a fine of 33,000 euros and to compensate the victim with 43,000 euros.
The sentence is number 22/2022, of July 12. The magistrates sign it Maria Felix Tena Aragon (chair and rapporteur), Manuela Eslava Rodriguez y Villalba Lava mercenary.
The convicted person has been a practicing lawyer since January 1980, a member of the Madrid Bar Association (ICAM), with an office in the Madrid town of Leganés.
The case has been handled by the lawyer Tomas Sanchez Mateos.
THE PROVEN FACTS
The events date back to 2008, when the victim was diagnosed with neuropathy at the Montepríncipe Hospital in Madrid. From March 28 to May 2, she had been admitted to the San Pedro de Alcántara hospital in Cáceres, where they never managed to find out what her illness was, and her neuropathy was finally diagnosed on May 19, 2008 in the aforementioned Madrid hospital.
Due to this delay in diagnosis, the woman suffers from a 20% loss of upper and lower limb strength and reactive depressive disorder. She has also suffered the loss of vision in one eye, although it is not known whether it is due to the previous pathology or to the undetected one.
The affected decided to denounce what happened and for this she hired a lawyer who was known in the Villuercas de Cáceres region and who had previously brought cases against her brother, her father and another relative. She had a first meeting with him in a bar in the municipality where she lives, accompanied by her husband, her brother and her father.
The convicted man told his client that “he was an unbeatable lawyer” and that he could get compensation of 600,000 euros
According to the sentence, in this meeting the lawyer told them that “he was an unbeatable lawyer” and that he could obtain compensation of 600,000 euros, since he had previously handled other similar cases. But for this he asked for 18,000 euros in advance, as a provision of funds. Amount that the defendant gave him the next day in an envelope, but did not receive an invoice.
However, “absolutely abandoning her duties and forgetting about her client’s professional assignment, aware of the consequences that could arise from this, she did not carry out any management at all for the first few months” despite the fact that her client contacted periodically with him by phone to ask him about the status of his claim, “stating only that the request was ongoing and that he had requested a series of reports, which was false because he had not filed any claim, a circumstance that the injured party found out by appearing one day in the Courts of Cáceres and asking the information service if there was any procedure in his name, obtaining a negative answer».
The lawyer did nothing until 14 months after the assignment. And not to file a complaint. According to the resolution, on January 7, 2011, after a telephone conversation with his client, he presented a letter addressed to the director of the San Pedro de Alcántara Hospital in which he said in a “friendly” way that he claimed the amount of 600,000 euros for damages, but without requesting the opening of a file for malpractice or patrimonial responsibility, as it should have done.
It was not until four years after the professional commission, on September 10, 2013, and more than five years after his treatment by the doctors of the Extremadura Health Service, when he filed a complaint against the doctors of the Ophthalmology and Neurology service of San Pedro de Alcántara, in addition to against the hospital itself, for a crime of injury.
Later, the Court of Instruction number 2 of Cáceres, which was in charge of the case, sent up to three resolutions to the lawyer so that he could clarify what the medical actions he denounced were. By not answering them, the file of the complaint was determined due to prescription of the crime.
Nor did she inform her client of the dismissal, it was she herself who found out when she went to ask the court about her case.
Put back in contact with the defendant, he indicated that he was going to file a civil lawsuit and that the lawsuit was won for sure. As the lawsuit was not filed, the husband of the injured woman contacted him by phone and he, knowing that the civil process had no prospect of succeeding and with the sole purpose of obtaining an economic benefit, requested more money to file the lawsuit, as a provision of funds, since the previous provision of 18,000 euros was already exhausted, requesting the amount of 6,000 euros.
The client told him that she was not going to pay him anything until he filed the lawsuit. Then, the accused, on October 20, 2015, eight months after the confirmation of the filing of the complaint by the Court of Cáceres, wrote a document that takes the form of a lawsuit and that he delivered to the father of the client so that he could moved to the Cáceres attorney to present it to the deanery and in order to obtain the promised 6,000 euros.
When the lawsuit was handed over to the prosecutor, when she saw it she told them to consult another lawyer, given the negative consequences that the dismissal of the lawsuit could have for her, since it was directed against several defendants and with such a high amount, 600,000 euros, which “could lead to a ruinous economic cost in the event of costs being awarded”.
Said ordinary lawsuit was directed against two internal medicine and ophthalmology doctors, respectively, against the San Pedro de Alcántara hospital complex and against the insurance company if the hospital complex had one, and “contained numerous errors and a plea with unfilled sections in ellipsis”. In her damages were assessed at 600,000 euros “without specifying why that amount was claimed.”
The client consulted another lawyer, who told her that the lawsuit was “doomed to the most absolute of failures” and that it was necessary to know the actions that the defendant had carried out since he was hired until he filed the complaint, so he decided not to file the lawsuit, not having contact with the defendant, who has never sent her an invoice for expenses and fees, nor has he contacted her again.
The sentence is not final. An appeal can be filed against it before the Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court.
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