West Van mayor barred for practicing legislation for 2 years: LSBC
The mayor of West Vancouver has been barred from practising his day task after he admitted to 3 occasions of “professional misconduct” whilst working towards law.
The Law Society of British Columbia suggests Mayor Mark Sager are not able to practice law for two decades.
The misconduct is in relation to the planning of a client’s will, the LSBC explains.
“Sager admitted to performing in a conflict of desire by resulting in the preparing of the will, in which he was named executor and trustee and acquired complete discretion to use estate resources to travel to England when his customer experienced not obtained unbiased legal assistance,” the LSBC explained.
“He also admitted to withdrawing $44,800.00, which includes taxes, in executor’s costs and $26,790.81, like taxes, in treatment and management expenses from the estate resources prior to getting approval from all of the beneficiaries or the courtroom to do so.”
The society extra that Sager “failed to preserve the needed documents in respect of the disbursement of estate cash and did not make or sustain call with the residual beneficiaries for roughly nine several years.”
Sager’s prohibition starts on April 1, 2024, and he has agreed to further more circumstances, the modern society suggests. These include things like not doing the job as or in any capacity as a attorney in B.C., and “not to act in any fiduciary roles arising from a solicitor-customer romance, and not to take care of any fiduciary home as outlined in the Regulation Culture Policies.”
In a statement to CityNews, Sager suggests he will resign from his Law Society membership as of April 1 “and refocus my entire focus on our community.”
“When I was elected mayor, I committed to leaving my authorized exercise to devote all of my time to the essential troubles facing West Vancouver. Sadly, problems to the Law Society delayed my resignation. 5 of the eight allegations from me have been dropped and 3 insignificant issues have been settled,” he stated.
It’s not the very first time the lawyer has been discovered to have dedicated misconduct by the LSBC. In 2018, Sager was discovered to have “improperly” accepted a $75,000 reward from his godmother even though writing her will. He was fined $20,000 by the society for that incident.
Sager was also the subject matter of a Port Moody law enforcement investigation, Elections BC confirmed to CityNews in November 2023, following allegations of “potential paying irregularities” had been recognized for the duration of a evaluation of Sager’s 2022 election marketing campaign.
–With data files from Cole Schisler