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Qld lawyer reprimanded over emails about alleged domestic violence victim
A Queensland lawyer was disciplined for a number of discourteous emails to an opposing solicitor, including one that claimed her client’s allegations of domestic violence were “at the low scale”.
Naomi Neilson
Mills John Kirin was publicly reprimanded, fined $2,000, and told to undertake domestic violence training for a series of comments he made to another solicitor between February and August 2022.
“The conduct diminishes the dignity and high standing of the profession and tends to reduce community respect for it.
“It is unbecoming and suggests a loss of the objectivity, independence and judgment needed for the proper discharge of professional responsibilities on which the administration of justice depends and the court relies,” judicial member Duncan McMeekin KC said.
While acting for a man in protection order proceedings, Kirin told the opposing lawyer that her client was “postnatally depressed” and mentally ill and accused her of “wandering the earth” with her infant child.
Kirin also accused the lawyer of having acted “belligerently”, relied on “blatant lies … unquestionably and uncritically”, became overzealous in a “legally aid funded crusade” against his client, and had been bullying and threatening him.
In other correspondence, Kirin added the opposing client’s domestic violence claims were “at the low scale of what we see every day”.
In his written reasons, McMeekin said that in a “difficult and emotionally charged area of legal practice”, this type of correspondence had the tendency “to diminish the impact of domestic violence”.
“We would acknowledge that there exists at least the potential to minimise quite inappropriately the possible impact on any client of whatever the conduct may be in question,” McMeekin said.
“That is evidently so as the background, context and personalities involved can mean some very great significance to one and perhaps not to another. Given that truism, a comment by a practitioner of the type in question here ought to be avoided, ought to be well aware of that potential, and is an aggravating aspect.”
McMeekin also observed Kirin had an “apparent incapacity” to understand the inappropriateness of his behaviour, having told the other solicitor that he would report her to the ACT Law Service if she did not withdraw her complaint.
He went so far as to allege her complaint would cause him to “re-live the horror of what happened to him in post-Europe” as a “recovering victim of torture sustained during his time working in post-Soviet bloc”.
McMeekin said there was “no question that sending rude, demeaning, derogatory, disparaging, personally abusive or offensive, and discourteous correspondence to or about a third party with an opposing interest” meets the description of unsatisfactory conduct.
In addition to the reprimand, fine, and course, Kirin was ordered to pay costs.
The case is Legal Services Commissioner v Kirin [2024] QCAT 489 (14 November 2024).
Naomi Neilson
Naomi Neilson is a senior journalist with a focus on court reporting for Lawyers Weekly.
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