The Supreme Court Ruling: Criminal Responsibility and Disloyalty in the Practice of Law

The Penal Code is not applicable to all unfair actions of the lawyer towards his client and not all disloyalty in the practice of Law can imply, without further ado, the requirement of criminal responsibility, as determined by the Supreme Court in a judgment of May 10 of 2023.

The speaker, Judge Puente Segura, concludes that “the idea that disloyalty in the practice of Law can imply, without further ado, the requirement of criminal liability is contrary to the need to reserve an application space to the sanctioning regime established in the General Statute of the Legal Profession“.

The speaker explains that the assertion of uncertain or false facts intended to confuse the judge, the correlative concealment of relevant facts, the failure to provide evidence of the that it be provided that could favor the person against whom the criminal action is directed and, of course, the serious and unjustified breach of procedural charges, the contribution of means of proof that have been obtained violating constitutional rights and guarantees.

Article 467.2 of the Criminal Code establishes that the lawyer or solicitor who, by action or omission, clearly harms the interests entrusted to him will be punished with a fine of 12 to 24 months and special disqualification for employment, public office, profession or trade from one to four years.

If the acts were carried out due to gross imprudence, the penalties of a fine of six to twelve months and special disqualification for their profession from six months to two years will be imposed.

For this reason, in the case in dispute, Puente Segura explains that in the witness statement of the legal representative of the appellant company, admitting that the lawyer, accused in this proceeding, He explained the procedural strategy that he was preparing to deploy, strategy that, consequently, the accuser knew when he gave his lawyer, as a provision of funds, the amount of 1,000 euros (at whose expense he filed at least two lawsuits, in addition to defending the rights of his client in the procedure insolvency proceeding against the subcontractor).

Finally, the magistrate points out that “in the trial it is revealed, indeed, that there was no deception on the part of the defendant that determined the realization in favor of him or a third party of any kind of patrimonial displacement. But the evidence that so Showed is none other than the witness statement of the person who maintained the accusation (whose knowledge, by definition, it could not ignore)”.