Opposing counsel lied!
Opposing counsel lied!
"In a civil law dispute, I believe that the opposing lawyer lied to achieve his ends. Can I take direct action against this lawyer because, in order to satisfy his client, he did not present the facts to the judge honestly?"
Gilberte, Carouge
Since 2000, the legal profession has been governed by the Federal Law on the Free Movement of Lawyers (LLCA), which sets out the professional rules to which lawyers are subject and establishes a supervisory authority empowered to impose disciplinary measures in the event of breaches of these provisions. In the canton of Geneva, this law is embodied in the Law on the Legal Profession (LPAv).
Under art. 12 let. a LLCA, a lawyer must practise his profession with care and diligence. To interpret this clause, the supervisory authority, the Commission du barreau, refers to the lawyer's oath. According to art. 27 of the LPAv, lawyers solemnly swear or promise not to knowingly use any means contrary to the truth to support the cases entrusted to them and not to seek to deceive the judges by any artifice or by any false exposition of the facts or the law.
Furthermore, according to the Federal Court, the "Uses and Customs" of the cantonal lawyers' associations are also used to interpret the law, but only insofar as they express an opinion that is widely held at national level. In this respect, pursuant to articles 2 and 27 of the Uses and Customs of the Geneva Bar Association, a lawyer must set an example of honour, probity, loyalty, dignity and humanity in all acts of his professional and private life. At no time should a lawyer knowingly provide a judge with information that is false or misleading.
In the event of a dispute involving a member of the Geneva Bar Association, the President of the Bar and the Council of the Association have primary jurisdiction. You can therefore either contact these people or refer the matter to the Bar Committee, bearing in mind that the Geneva Bar Association is a private association as opposed to the Bar Committee, which is an authority. However, either of these institutions is empowered to penalise an improperly practising lawyer, following the example of the Geneva Bar Council, which in 1989 reprimanded one of its members who had claimed that a sum of money had been paid in full to him when this was not the case, considering that such behaviour violated the obligation of accuracy and probity imposed by the Uses and Customs and constituted a breach of the lawyer's professional oath.
