Judge replaces suspended sentences with real ones for crooked lawyer, agent

Suspended sentences were not sufficient punishment for a lawyer and a consultant who took shares of their clients' compensation, something they knew to be illegal, the Court of Appeal found yesterday as it sentenced them both to jail.

Solicitor Gary Yeong Yun-hong, 44, received a prison sentence of three years and two months while consultant Ip Hon-ming, 62, was sentenced to two years and two months. Both had their suspended sentences quashed.

Yeong and Ip were convicted in April of 25 and 26 counts of champerty respectively. The charge refers to anyone taking a cut from a payout in a lawsuit, and is intended to prevent frivolous litigation. The offence has been abolished as archaic in many other common law jurisdictions, but city courts have upheld the law all through this case.

The appeal court's judges found the trial judge erred in ruling that Yeong and Ip had stopped engaging in the illegal practice of signing so-called contingent agreements with their clients after the Law Society issued a circular to remind its members of the consequences of champerty in May 2005.

Mr Justice Michael Lunn, the court's vice-president, wrote in yesterday's ruling that, "given the undisputed evidence that, far from desisting in their conduct, the [pair] continued to advance the champertous agreements for almost two years after the issue of the Law Society circular", the judge was wrong to find that they stopped the practice once the consequences were spelled out.

Lunn also found that the judge was wrong to issue suspended sentences on the grounds of "strong mitigation".

"The [pair] had … continued to advance the illegal champertous agreements to the extent described earlier," he wrote.