A partner at Welsh firm Gabb & Co has admitted five breaches of professional conduct rules over his handling of miners' compensation claims.


Glyn Maddocks, a Law Society Council member, was fined £15,000 and ordered to pay about £60,000 costs by the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal last week. The firm will repay about £160,000 to miners it acted for between 2000 and 2004. It is the third miners case to reach the tribunal.



Charges admitted by Mr Maddocks included failure to recognise a client/firm conflict of interest, failing to consider the terms of agreements between clients and claims management company IDC and the impact of agreements on charges made by IDC, and that his firm had paid unlawful 'referral fees'.



The tribunal was told Gabb & Co paid IDC more than £110,000 for the cases and that contract terms saw IDC receive a further £200,000 from clients' damages.



Mr Maddocks said: 'It was never our intention to contravene any professional rules and at every stage of the process we acted honestly and openly with our clients. We have not profited from any deductions made and at the time believed we were acting in accordance with the claims handling agreements, which were not, in the early stages, clear.



'Rather than being ordered to repay these deductions, as has been widely mis-reported, we offered to pay these deductions back to our clients - even though we were never actually in receipt of them.'



An IDC spokesman said the fees it charged reflected the risk it took in paying disbursements, which were not recovered from the client in unsuccessful cases, prior to the introduction of the medical assessment process. Thereafter there was a £100 fee for arranging venues where clients could receive free advice.



Anita Rice