SINGAPORE – A lawyer who made social media posts on pending courtroom proceedings and tried to garner public assist for his disobedience of a courtroom order to pay prices was suspended for 15 months on Tuesday (April 12).
The Court of Three Judges, which has the ability to droop or disbar attorneys, mentioned the conduct of Mr Zero Nalpon “demonstrated a wilful disregard for the professional standards expected of legal practitioners”.
His Facebook posts had been “exhibitionist and self-aggrandising” on the expense of the integrity of pending courtroom proceedings and the Attorney-General’s Chambers (AGC) in its reliable makes an attempt to hunt his compliance with the prices order, mentioned the courtroom.
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It discovered that one in every of Mr Nalpon’s posts amounted to contempt of courtroom, because it prejudged a problem that was pending earlier than an enchantment decide.
In suspending him, the courtroom additionally took into consideration the very fact that Mr Nalpon, who has been a lawyer for 26 years, has comparable disciplinary antecedents.
In 2014, he was censured by the courtroom for making offensive remarks in opposition to sure deputy public prosecutors (DPPs) in letters to the Attorney-General and disseminating these letters to 3rd events with the intent to humiliate these DPPs.
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The present disciplinary motion stemmed from a case the place Mr Nalpon’s consumer was convicted and sentenced over a drug consumption cost by a district decide in September 2018.
In February 2019, Mr Nalpon revealed on a public Facebook group materials regarding the enchantment proceedings.
In a put up on Feb 11, he hooked up a duplicate of his letter to Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon, by which he criticised the district decide for plagiarism.
Mr Nalpon alleged that the district decide’s written judgment was “useless and unfair” as a substantive portion was copied from the prosecution’s submissions.
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