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August 21, 2024 - 7:00 PM
The BC Law Society repaid a Vancouver Island woman $300,000 because her lawyer overcharged her. Now the regulator is going after her former lawyer to reimburse the funds.
Both she and the law society have made multiple attempts to get disbarred Victoria lawyer Darren Hart to cough up the money, so now the law society is turning to BC Supreme Court.
The law society will repay clients whose money is misappropriated by lawyers authorized to practice in the province, finding Hart overcharged Jennifer Quaggin when he represented her on a divorce file 11 years ago.
It was one of two mishandled cases that led to his disbarment.
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The law society indemnified her with $300,000 and filed in court to have Hart pay that back to the law society, but it's far less than what he had overcharged Quaggin in 2013.
When Hart was first hired he was to be paid on an hourly basis, but he convinced Quaggin to sign a contingency fee agreement instead. Once that was signed, Hart settled the file out of court and without her knowledge.
He was paid $1 million based on the agreement and subsequently took his coworkers on a trip to Las Vegas to celebrate, according to a BC Supreme Court decision earlier this year.
Hart was "petitioned into bankruptcy" by Quaggin. His firm was closed and he was subsequently disbarred twice by the law society, which found the work he had done for Quaggin should have cost around $125,000 instead. The law society called it "absurdly unfair and unjust."
He has not responded in court to the law society's notice of claim, which was filed, Aug. 19.
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