Complaint to OLSC about solicitor Moya de Luca-Leonard

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This is a complaint to the Office of the NSW Legal Services Commissioner about solicitor Moya de Luca-Leonard. Complaint has 9 steps, so I go one by one. Some information is hidden to protect privacy of involved people.

Before lodging a Complaint

The recommendation to read about OLSC or contact them.

Authority to Represent

Are you representing someone else: no.

Complainant Details

My contact details.

Lawyer Details

Allows you to search for lawyer by name or firm.

Select lawyer type: solicitor.

Lawyer Contact Details

Lawyers contact details. I also had a look at register of solicitors, when I was not sure about the address.

Complaint Details

Have you tried to resolve matter with the lawyer?

Yes.

If yes, how? If not, why not?

Note: an electronic form may lose text formatting, so I add the same information in a separate document as an attachment together with detailed info named “2023-10-29 Complaint to OLSC about solicitor Moya de Luca-Leonard.pdf”.

There is tripartite agreement to have costs agreed or assessed, but Moya de Luca-Leonard is providing false information that her costs have been accepted. On 2023-10-24 I sent an email to Moya offering to pay her reasonable fees, but she has not replied to it yet. For detailed information please have a look at the costs section of the complaint.

If I understand correctly, the bill is not payable as the contract with Moya was on a “no win no fee” basis. The bill becomes payable only after money is received from insurance. I have PTSD from a road traffic injury, and they represented me on a personal injury claim for this injury. It makes it very difficult for me to deal with anything related to the injury and I misunderstood the deadlines in the past. To avoid a similar situation, I am submitting a complaint while in my understanding there is still room for negotiations on legal fees.

Please provide a summary of your complaint and include the following details:

  • What happened? Who was involved?
  • Details of significant events, such as dates of meetings and court hearings.
  • What are your concerns?

Complete description of complaint does not fit in these fields and text formatting may be lost. So, I provide it in an attachment.

I came to Moya in June 2020 to help me with my personal injury claim after a road traffic injury in 2015-03-30. I felt misrepresented by a personal injury firm named Law Partners and switched lawyers. Moya promised to deal with exorbitant costs from Law Partners and to significantly improve my claim. Starting by dismissing a report full of absurd errors from insurer (QBE) hired psychologist Vanitha Moodley and getting my PTSD recognized.

At first, she did OK as she had submitted to SIRA (now PIC) documents related to PTSD. Something Law Partners have not done at all, but I find out about it only later. PTSD was recognized by the PIC assessor. However, after this it seems her work quality dropped significantly.

Moya told me not to worry about the Vanitha report and Law Partners fees. However, time passed, and she did nothing about it. Because of this some deadlines to deal with Law Partners fees in a simpler way have passed. Now, I am not sure if I will be able to do anything about it.

The consequences for not dismissing the Vanitha report were terrible. That report could have been easily dismissed as it has an enormous list of absurd factual errors (I counted 146) that would require a teleportation device, time travel, is completely insistent and so on. I cannot believe how the solicitor can be this negligent or even worse intentionally did not want to dispute it. Unfortunately, the PIC medical assessment panel took this into account and my chances to get anything more than a so-called buffer ($100,000) for the loss of income became minuscule. I have no income since the injury and future looks very grim. Before the injury I was a highly skilled software developer with a PhD in computer science.

Moya grossly exaggerated her fees. She estimated the cost of the work starting from $15,000 up to $45,000 for all tasks but done only a fraction of it and exaggerated significantly the amount of the other activities, while a large part of them were not even needed. It is like Moya worked only till got some useful result and then focused on exaggerating her fees while being very negligent towards my case.

Moya also provided some wrong information and applied psychological pleasure to take actions that were not in my interests. The most painful of them was that the claim for damage on my bicycle is covered by CTP claim and that I have to drop my claim in small claims court. While financially it is not by far as significant as the CTP claim it was very emotionally important for me as that was the only way to get some accountability from the driver. Moya was fully aware of this, but still pressured me to drop a small claims court case by telling me that by law it has to be included in the claim she is managing.

At the end instead of attempting to fix her errors she blamed first others, then potential corruption (insurer having political influence) and resigned. This put me in a very difficult situation which unfortunately I was not able to fix and ended up getting much lower compensation than expected and not being able to proceed to court to fix it.


How do you want us to help you to resolve your complaint?

Please note: One of our officers may contact you to discuss what we can and we cannot do

  1. Check if Moya voided the contract by resigning, negligence or providing incorrect information. If so, make the contract void.
  2. If contract is still void her bill is grossly exaggerated, please help me to reduce it to reasonable sum
  3. I believe some of her actions are unprofessional and at least negligent. I hope you will take appropriate action.


What area of legal service does this complaint arise from?

Personal injuries

Are you disputing the legal costs you have been charged by your lawyer?

Yes

Notes

I am trying to describe everything as accurately as I can. Unfortunately many of these memories cause high levels of stress. It quickly triggers PTSD response and shuts down my ability to think. Often I have to take a long break or can continue only the next day or even later. This is the second time I am writing a complaint about a lawyer, but the previous one has not been processed yet so I still do not know if I am doing it well. If there is more information required please let me know. Previously I tried to fit everything into 1 application with 10 attachments. This meant that I had to merge many documents and I think it is not a good idea. I realized that you probably handle everything in electronic form and it would be much easier if every document is a separate file. So, I will attach the ones that I think are more important and send others later. This also makes it difficult to describe everything in detail. So, I hope the best way is to provide here a brief description of what happened and what I am complaining about and then provide more detailed information about specifics with attached evidence.

There were also other problems related to PTSD as some memories got blocked and I am at risk of missing some important information while writing a complaint, but it might come back later. Also when stressed I may not express myself very clearly, partially it is due to the fact that then I think in Lithuanian and may lose some meaning in translation. However, I do my best to be precise and I try to present facts accurately (actually I have many of them running in my mind, just struggling to put them in writing in a clear way). I am also tired all the time and I constantly have to push myself to exhaustion while still getting only several productive hours a week. I dedicate all my time and energy to solving my legal problems as it is also a way to get better. I hope I am not missing any deadlines this time.

I also do not know what to do with some attachments. For example there are some documents that were dozens of pages, but the information that I needed is only on one page. If I try to upload all the files I may reach file size limit, but if I take only one page from the document it might look suspicious. I hope to ask about this to the person who will be assigned to assess my complaint.

Before I got PTSD myself I never imagined how debilitating it is. It is hard to describe it and I would need to be telling it for a very long time, but I will try to provide information about it in a separate document.

Background

I was cycling in Sydney when a car from oncoming traffic made a right turn straight into me on 2015-03-30. I was sure I was going to die when I saw a car accelerating towards me. I survived, but among other things the fear stayed. Since then, I am struggling with PTSD.

I was frustrated with the way QBE (drivers insurance company) was managing the claim, so I initially contacted Law Partners to represent me. However, I was unhappy with their representation. I feel that they did not collect or submit important information about my health problems. At the end of April 2020, I got a report by Vanitha Moodley (a psychologist hired by QBE solicitors) that had a large number of absurd errors.

Due to concerns about Law Partners’ advice about this report, I contacted one solicitor whom I knew. He recommended to me Moya, who helped him in the past with one client who had a personal injury claim, as he worked in a different area of law. This is how I ended up with Moya.

Moya received information that set out my concerns, which were:

  1. Issues with Moodley’s report;
  2. Law Partners fees being exaggerated and well above what had been quoted;
  3. PTSD had not been recognized, and;
  4. Law Partners’ unwillingness to go to independent assessment or court.

Moya made me promises before I signed the costs agreement with her. These were the promises I got from Moya:

  1. Moodley report is not a big problem. She deals with reports like these all the time and she will have it dismissed easily (will not affect independent assessment).
  2. She has dealt with exaggerated legal fees in the past and has gone to court against other solicitors. She knows what she is doing. She will deal with it.
  3. PTSD is classified as physical injury, not as mental one, because it causes long lasting changes in the brain. I can apply for it to be assessed. Law Partners misinformed me that there is nothing that can be done.
  4. She will bring my claim to independent assessment or court if necessary and she is sure that I will have a much better financial outcome compared to what I can get now with Law Partners' offer. She said that my claim is relatively simple, but we need to move quickly in order to fix it.

My complaint against Moya

Costs

Exaggerated legal fees

Moya estimated legal fees starting from $15,000 with max total costs at $60,000 before she started representing me. She has done only a fraction of the work yet, the bill is already higher than the original estimate. While representing me Moya updated me on the phone about her ongoing fees a few times. The last time she mentioned it, she told me that if the claim will be settled soon, and there was a chance, at the end her fees including the barrister consultations should be no more than $17,000. However, when she sent me a bill about a month later it was over $40,000 and there was very little work done. I told her that I do not agree with fees as she quoted 60,000 for the whole claim going to court and we were far from it. I tried my best to get some control over the situation, but it led nowhere. Year later she slammed me with an updated bill for $77,000 while the only thing she did was to write several emails and resend some documents. She did it badly, missing key information, that led to the situation where I basically lost any chances to get compensation for loss of income.

Majority of her bill consists of tasks that she actually did very little (like one page of particulars in settlement offer or forwarding information I sent to her) or had very little or no purpose for my claim. Also, most of these tasks did not require or reflect the skills she claimed to have. Actually, many would be done better by any novice specialist if done properly.

Misinformed about the purpose of government listed legal costs

At the first meeting with Moya, she told me that there is a list of legal fees at the official site for personal injuries. She told me that these prices are absurdly low, and no one is using them. She told me that this is bureaucratic left over from a long time ago. I was wondering why they keep it, but I have seen lots of leftover information on various sites. Only a few years later I have learned that this is important information, that for many claims this is the fees solicitors work for and that it is used for getting back legal fees from insurance companies. If she explained it to me properly, I would look for the solicitor who would take my claim based on these fees. I also was told that I would get legal fees back if my claim is successful. If I knew that I would get only this part, I would know about the importance of keeping track of it.

Moya wrongly stated that I accepted her fees

She wrote to the QBE solicitor that her fees were accepted knowing that it is not true and asking for the fees to be paid directly. By doing this she is delaying compensation payout.

After Moya resigned, I found a new solicitor Peter Livers. I thought that by breaking the contract Moya resigns from her fees or part of it. I told Moya then that I do not agree with her fees. Actually, I told her that I am not happy with her fees when I got the first invoice, but she said that fees have to be considered after successful completion of the claim. I was told by another solicitor that I may be required to pay some fees. We signed a tripartite agreement (see "2023-01-24 triparted deed signed.pdf") and sent it to Moya to sign and transfer the file. The tripartite agreement includes clauses that "C The client may be required, bond or liable to pay costs to the former practitioner" and "3.1 THE CLIENT gives to the present practitioner on irrevocable authority, for valuable consideration, to receive money from the other party and to pay the former practitioner’s costs of an amount to be agreed or, failing agreement, as assessed".

Recently I found out that she wrote to QBE solicitor Timothy Ceballos to pay her directly all fees. Timothy informed that he is ready to do so and is illegally (or at least I believe so) holding payout. She also wrote to Peter lying that she has an agreement for her fees to be paid directly to her (see "2023-08-31 email from Moya to Livers Moya stating that her fees were accepted.pdf"), Peter did not agree.

After being asked to comply with previous agreement and have her fees to be held at Peter trust account till they were agreed or assessed Moya wrote to QBE stating that her fees were accepted and demanding to block compensation pay (see "2023-10-19 emails Moya Peter - Moya demands full pay implying that it was accepted.pdf").

On 2023-10-24 I sent an email to Moya offering to pay her reasonable fees, but she has not replied to it yet (see "2023-10-24 email to Moya - Moya de Luca-Leonard legal fees for my personal injury claim.pdf").

By wrongly stating that her fees were accepted and blocking compensation payment Moya is adding additional stress, when I am already struggling to cope. However, she knows my mental health status very well and I believe this is her strategy: by bullying to completely break my spirit. To some degree it is working as it is causing harm to my health.

Poor advice and representation

Misinformed that PTSD is treated as physical injury

At the beginning Moya informed me that PTSD is classified as physical injury and therefore it will be a different assessment than the mental health impact that I have been assessed for and did not pass the threshold. Again, only after Moya resigned, I learned that is not true. I do not yet fully understand the reasoning providing incorrect information about it and possible consequences. I suspect that if in time I will find out that I am not able to recover as well as I expected I will no longer be able to ask for further assessment of damages.

As far I know on its own this would not be a reason to complain about her, but it just keeps wondering what else I was misinformed about.

False promise to deal with Law Partners fees

Moya told me that I should not do anything about Law Partners legal fees, she will take care of it. Year later, in September 2011, she told me that she is not an expert in this area, but she will take care of it. In October 2022 she told me that the best solution is to go to court. I tried to find out more about exaggerated legal fees and found out that there is Office of the NSW Legal Services Commissioner (OLSC) that can help. Moya was strongly against it. She also told me that I cannot apply for cost assessments at supreme court because I missed the deadline and even if I apply, they cannot help me. If Moya did not misguide me about it, I would have looked for a solution and would have taken appropriate action. I have now submitted complaints about Law Partners at OLSC (one for solicitor Gillian Potts and one for barrister Ken Pryde). However, I missed the deadlines, and it is unclear if I will get any result, but I will need other ways to deal with their legal fees. I also had to rush and could not prepare complaints properly, especially the one about Pryde. I appealed for a time extension, but only time will tell how it will go. Just for going to Moya Law partners increased fees about $70,000. Law Partners fees could be significantly reduced or potentially dismissed all together if not the empty promises by Moya. This fake promise and dragging of time almost certainly cost me a lot of stress, time, effort and money. It also reduced my chances of getting justice and put me through not necessary suffering.

However, Moya must have known how to deal with exaggerated fees as when recently I looked for her appearance in court it was a complaint for her exaggeration of fees. Her insistence that I should not complain to OLSC makes it difficult to write this complaint. All the time I hear her say that OLSC will do nothing and will only make things worse.

Incorrect advice that small courts claim is same as insurance claim

One of the biggest injustices in my life is that the driver who hit me got away without any consequences. Police simply did not do their job. There were witnesses and most likely some hard evidence. However, evidence was not checked and collected at the time and witness statements ignored. I tried to fix it but was not able to. I was left with only one option: to go to small claims court against the driver for the damage on the bicycle. It was emotionally exceptionally important for me. It felt like it was the thing that could make me feel safe again. When I met Moya for the first time I asked about damage to the bicycle, even though I was told that it is a separate matter by other solicitors previously, just in case Moya can help with it too. However, she told me that she does not deal with it. I knew I couldn't deal with a few things at the time, so I was hoping that after I am done with the insurance claim I can focus on the case against the driver. However, the insurance claim was taking much longer than expected or I was told, and I had to deal with a case against the driver. It is meant to be simple and there is not even legal representation in these matters, but I was struggling big time. After a few months of struggles I contacted Redfern Legal Center (RLC). They gave me simple step by step instructions and I was able to submit documents to the small claims court on time. All that was left was to deliver court documents to the driver. I was waiting for some documents from the police and when I got them COVID restrictions were introduced. I had enough time, but restrictions were extended and when they were finally lifted, I had about a month to deliver documents. I went to the driver's address and found out that he had moved. I had few ideas how I could look for him but decided to ask Moya to help to locate him. At first, she asked me to wait for a few days. I thought that she was looking for a new address. However, she told me that I cannot proceed with a claim against the driver. That I was misinformed by other solicitors. In particular she was referring to the solicitor who recommended me her. She told me that he is old, has not worked in this field for a long time and has no clue how it works now. Moya insisted that it is one court case and if I proceed with small claims court, I will not be able to proceed with insurance claim. That the idea of going to small claims court even with the help of RLC is a bad one. She told me that even if QBE admitted liability, it will no longer be valid and may need to prove it for the insurance claim too. The claim through PIC will be dismissed and I will need to go to court. This will cause huge additional costs. She told me that the right thing to do is to simply include compensation for damage to the bicycle in my insurance claim and she will do this. She asked to send her receipt from the bicycle shop for replacement of the bicycle and it was damaged beyond repair. She also told me that it will undo all the good work we have done as we have PTSD recognized by PIC and that this will help for other injured people as they will teach about it in Sydney University. It sounded strange to me as I could not imagine Moya having any connection with Sydney University. Moya was very insistent that I have no right to continue with small claims court. She also said that she will need to take some urgent action related to my claim, but she gave me no details. PTSD puts me in a place where I get easily overwhelmed by the situation and I was not physically able to do anything else, but to accept Moya ultimatum. She updated my statement to be against the driver, but later on when I sent her information about damage to the bicycle, she called me recommending not to do so. I spoke with her about twice on the phone till I finally gave in and agreed to write to her not to include bicycle repair estimates in my claim. At that time, I did not know about fawn response to threats. Now I know more and try to avoid it. However, it is still easy to manipulate me. Nevertheless, it does not excuse Moya's actions in any way. Much later I learned that all Moya said about small claims court to me was not true. I don't really know why she did this. At some point she told me that she did this in case QBE would decide suddenly to make a good offer and knowledge about a small claims court case might delay it. However, at that time Moya already knew that QBE sent an application to have a review of my medical assessment, so they were not going to suddenly make a good offer. The problem is that it had a massive negative effect on me. I spent so much time and effort preparing for a small court case. All I needed was official recognition that it was against the rule what the driver did. I lost that chance because of incorrect advice and manipulation. My PTSD symptoms went over any sustainable level. I could not get continuous sleep for longer than 40 minutes. Coming back to sleep has become very difficult. I started feeling so unsafe at home that after waking up with nightmares I would need to rush outside to control a panic attack. My hyper-vigilance jumped so high that there was no energy left for anything else. It took away most of the progress of the treatment I had for the last few years.

Failure to provide information about Vanitha Moodley report full of absurd errors

Moya told me not to worry about the Vanitha report; she will deal with it. I have provided Moya with the list of main errors and reminded about it several times. However, time passed, and she did nothing about it (I was thinking that she had done something, just did not inform me). The consequences for not dismissing the Vanitha report were terrible. That report could have been easily dismissed as it has an enormous number of absurd factual errors (I counted 146) that would require a teleportation device, time travel, is completely insistent and so on. I cannot believe how the solicitor can be this negligent or even worse intentionally did not want to dispute it. One possible explanation would be that Moya did not want to cause trouble for psychologists that are part of PIC experts. Only much later I learned that Moodley is famous for writing false reports.

QBE used the Moodley report as a key argument for review of independent assessment that I have PTSD. I was not aware of all the details, but that was another excellent opportunity for Moya to highlight how absurd Moodley's report is, but she has done nothing, and review was granted. Unfortunately, the PIC medical assessment panel took this into account and my chances to get anything more than a so-called buffer ($100,000) for the loss of income became minuscule. I have no income since the injury and future looks very grim. Before the injury I was a highly skilled software developer with a PhD in computer science.

As a result, it was included in decision making by the medical assessment review panel and severely damaged my claim. I think the Moodley report impacted a review of medical assessment that concluded that I had some adaptive impairment before the injury and was only capable of doing work that was lesser than my skills. The panel's decision was final. I think it reduced my chances to get compensation for past and future income loss and as a result I got only a buffer ($100k compensation for the past income) and not much more for the future. I will attach the panel decision. Moya tried to mention it later in the particulars, but it was too late (see "2022-10-19 lr qbe 9 offer.pdf" page 3 item 4) "Prior to the accident the claimant was not taking anti-depressant medication and his wife was not helping with everyday tasks - this is an error i the paperwork generated before the current solicitor’s retainer. The claimant worked and functioned day to day, and eventually (later) his wife joined him from Lithuania".

Poor communication or rudeness

Psychological pressure to settle

Sometime after PTSD was recognized by an independent assessor Moya asked if I wanted to settle. From the start I maintained my view that previous lawyers from Law Partners used fake settlement negotiations only to inflate fees. I do not want to spend time trying to settle and would like to go straight to an independent assessment of my claim. Moya forwarded me an offer from QBE that did not include any compensation for loss of past income in September 2021. I told her that I do not agree, and I would like to go to an independent assessment. Then Moya told me that QBE asked for a review of the medical assessment, and we cannot proceed till it is rejected or accepted and done.

The PIC panel medical review left PTSD but added new information that I had reduced capacity to work before the injury. I was not asked about it during assessment and the only source telling this was incorrect Moodley report. Moya blamed previous solicitors and me for this failure. Then instead of trying to fix her errors (negligence or corruption) she suddenly started putting heavy pressure on me to accept a settlement without any compensation for loss of income. As an argument she told me that it will affect my Centrelink payments, but I am not receiving any. Some communications were quite offensive. As ultimate pressure she resigned.

Resigning from case with fake reasons

Pressure to settle did not work simply because I already had this experience with Law Partners, this was one of the core reasons why I came to Moya: to bring my claim to independent assessment. I told Moya that I want my claim to be submitted for independent assessment. Previously she was claiming that she has spent a lot of time preparing my claim and at any point everything is ready to submit for assessment. So, I asked her to do it. Instead of doing this she wrote to me that she is resigning. She provided some fake reasons that she feels like I do not trust her or later on, that it will affect my Centrelink payments. However, I am not receiving any payments from Centrelink. Even after resigning she was putting pressure to settle. The only explanation I can come up with is:

  1. she felt that due to her negligence my claim was damaged beyond repair,
  2. she exaggerated her fees claiming for the work she has not done, and she did not want anyone to look at it.
Incorrect information provided about current legal representation

Moya informed the QBE solicitor that she is no longer representing me and that they should contact me directly or the solicitor who recommended her some time ago. This implies that another is representing me. This is not true. He was just providing me emotional support dealing with the difficult situation Moya put me in. As a result, QBE informed PIC that I found a new solicitor, and they no longer need to give time to look for a solicitor. It put me in a difficult situation as suddenly I had no time to think and clear my concerns about the solicitor to go ahead with. As a result, I made a bad choice and had to stick with it.

More on impact of Moya actions

At the start I was worried as I thought that Moya is not paying enough attention to the problems I come to her with. However, she reassured me many times that she is very well skilled in these matters, and I should leave it to her. I was in a very dark place with severely reduced cognitive abilities, so I had no choice, but to trust her. At some point there was a glimmer of hope as a new independent assessment was assigned and the report was very accurate.

However, after this, things didn't go well. Her push to drop the last chance to get some feeling of justice against the driver significantly intensified PTSD symptoms. Since then, I had to spend all my time trying to heal damage to my mental health and attend to the problems she promised to deal with but was ignoring. Her actions after an unfortunate medical assessment in September 2022 just completely destroyed my faith in solicitors who work on an hourly basis (even if it was not as bad as with the previous lawyers Gillian Potts and Ken Pryde). Since then, I spent all my time and energy trying to fix the situation but failed. All this could have been avoided, the last 2 years were of needless suffering and the future looks very grim, if she did her job. Any good things can be overwritten if you do bad things after it. All for greed, to charge higher fees, while doing less work.

Attachments

  1. Complaint details
  2. Cost agreement
  3. Itemized bills
  4. Emails
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