At 77 years old, Ernest Staine is one of the most senior legal practitioners in the country - but he's also in senior trouble tonight - and today the court agreed to an order which would commit him to jail.
That's because he has 230 thousand dollars for Rita McField - the proceeds from a land transaction. Staine was holding the money in escrow on behalf of a client for McField. He was supposed to release it when the land title was cleaned up. That happened in the middle of 2014, but he didn't hand over the money. Now almost half a year has passed and he still hasn't handed it over. Supreme Court Justice Courtney Abel gave him until the end of January to hand over the money - and still, nothing was forthcoming.
Today he sent the court a Doctor's letter saying he's not well enough to appear. And based only on that, he was given a break - but the court ok'd an order which requires him to come up with the money by February 17th, or face committal to jail. Bradley-Ellis explained it to us outside the courtroom:..
Julie-Ann Ellis-Bradley, attorney for McField
"It is absolutely unacceptable. It's against the code of ethics that attorneys are required to abide by and it's certainly something that should never happened. Mr. Staine did accept/collect from the clients, the sum of $250.000. About $20,000 of that was paid over to the seller of the property. He acted in that transaction and was required to pay over the balance of the monies to the seller. This transaction for no reason should have taken this long and since last year September at least, we have been trying to recover this money for the clients. Both the purchaser and the vendor sued Mr. Staine for the sums. Mr. Staine asks for two extensions to pay this money. On the last occasion he promised the court that such payment would be made by the 31st January and unfortunately, 31st January has passed and instead of appearing in court today, we were advised that he was not feeling well. They did find that he was in contempt and because of his medical situation, the court did make an order for committal of Mr. Staine, which is suspended until the 17th, in light of the humanitarian considerations I gather."
Rita McField
"I don't know what to say really. I think it's awful. I am getting tired of waiting."
Staine is being sued by both the seller and the buyer - who is the one that retained him in the first place to act as an escrow agent.
He also faces contempt charges for non-disclosure of banking details relevant to the transaction.
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