Can lawyers accept and keep money (for fees) that was know or should have been known to have been stolen.

If someone steals from me then uses some of that money to pay a lawyer to file a lawsuit against me that is later lost. Can I successfully demand and force the lawyer to pay me the money they accepted from the thief. The whole issue from the get go was about this person stealing money from my company.

Canada

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Business_Value

Can lawyers accept and keep money (for fees) that was know or should have been known to have been stolen.

---

Hello Business:

In the US, they can't. But, even if they can't in Canada too, the problem you're going to have is proving it in civil court.

However, you could report him to the bar, and they'll do their OWN investigation which you might be able to use. I don't know, really. But, not knowing has never stopped me before.

excon

I see legal problems with this situation - if the person steals $1,000 and then gives an Attorney $1,000 it will be impossible to prove that it's the same $1,000.

I'm a little confused - the person stole from YOU and then HE sued YOU? For what?

Attorneys are paid from drug money all the time. The US Government - which has lots of Attorneys with nothing better to do - tries to get it back from the Attorneys. I've never seen the Government win - for the $1,000 example above.

Also, the Attorney (of course) always "presumes" his client is innocent and if the money is stolen, he doesn't know it.

That is nonsense... most likely the criminal has to pay his laywer large sums of money that are many multiples of what his net worth could possibly without including the loot from the crime. It would be easy to show the perp must have used the stolen money through forensic auditing of the criminals sources of income.
The IRS does this type of thing all the time.