The Prothonotary v Campbell … The upstanding Tamworth lawyer who fell from grace … Law Society’s lame efforts at purging the profession … Plundering a deranged client’s wealthy estate … False swearing and perjury … Attempt to cover-up moral and ethical lapse … Greed got the better of an “unimpeachable” character 

He was once a pillar of society – partner of the big law shop Everingham Solomons, president of the local rugby club, handed the plate around at church on Sunday, former mayor, an all-round good bloke. 

However, there was a blot on Doug’s escutcheon, a blot that upset the cosy disciplinary regime run by the NSW Law Society during the 1970s. 

On July 27, 1974 Campbell took instructions to make the will for a New England woman, Nora Phyllis Wright, a widow and part of the district’s grazing dynasty. 

She was enormously wealthy with two rural properties and a large amount of valuable jewellery, original artworks and antique furniture. 

Campbell knew this and he knew that she was labouring under the delusion that her finances were in ruin and that rural industries were in a state of collapse. In short, she lacked testamentary capacity. 

Her close family were disinherited and her entire estate, apart some some small legacies totalling $15,000 to employees, was left to Campbell. 

Her behaviour prior to the making of this will was bizarre. She had slaughtered some of her beloved pets and then on August 23, 1974 she committed suicide with a shotgun.

She believed that her estate would be a burden on her relatives and that they would not receive any benefits, “only trouble”. She thought it best to make Campbell the sole executor and beneficiary of a whale sized proportion of the estate in the mistaken belief she was bankrupt and the properties had no future.  

Mrs Wright had no independent advice. The will was written in Campbell’s hand and witnessed in a milk bar by two employees. He read only a “summary” of its contents to the testatrix. 

The story was soon around Tamworth. In fact, a journalist at the Northern Daily Leader tipped off your correspondent who at that stage was writing a column, On The Rialto, at the Financial Review. 

Mrs Wright’s relatives took action against Campbell and bit by painful bit the solicitor’s dishonesty emerged. 

He made a false statement in the stamp affidavit as well as false statements to the probate judge, Justice Thomas Waddell. 

The statements made in the stamp affidavit and the evidence before Waddell were ultimately referred by the Law Society to the Statutory Committee, then the principal mechanism for disciplinary proceedings against solicitors. 

Campbell came up with fresh falsehoods before the Statutory Committee which, on December 16, 1976, severely reprimanded him with a six months suspension relating to his perjury and false swearing. 

It was a decision that defies comprehension, even in the zeitgeist of the times where the wet lettuce leaf was applied frequently to the wrist of nefarious practitioners. 

A possible explanation was that the Law Society confined the offences to be examined by the Statutory Committee to the false swearing issues rather than his misconduct with the will. In those times, protection of the professional reputations was often more important that protecting the public. 

Before Justice Waddell, Campbell swore that the stamp affidavit set out the assets in the estate. Under cross-examination he conceded that two items had been omitted. 

Later, he remembered that another two assets should have been included. Before the great gnomes of the Statutory Committee he admitted that four items had not been included in his affidavit, yet the truth was that there were a total of seven items that had been valued but had been deliberately excluded.

These included paintings of “considerable value”. He said these were “unpremeditated” omissions, while the NSW Court of Appeal in later proceedings brought by the Prothonotary, because the Law Society and the Statutory Committee had conspicuously failed in their functions, found the omissions “knowingly false”. 

The Court of Appeal in proceedings brought by the Prothonotary was non-plussed by the committee’s approach, “… we find it somewhat surprising that no part of the conduct of the defendant in relation to the making of the will was made the subject of any complaint by the Law Society to the committee … 

“We are at a loss to understand why the questions before the committee and the evidence was limited …” 

Indeed the Statutory Committee had said: 

“No information was given to the committee as to who prepared the will and it is assumed in the solicitor’s favour that he did not.” 

The Old Mates Act was in full swing. 

Athol Moffitt, Ray Reynolds and Harold Glass leapt on the missing chunk of Campbell’s misconduct. At first, Campbell submitted that he would not reapply for admission if his misconduct in relation to Mrs Wright’s remained unexamined. 

Campbell had drawn up an earlier will on June 20, 1974, in which Mrs Wright’s estate was primary left to her single sister and her nieces and nephews. 

Roughly four weeks later she made her final will on July 29, 1974, which omitted all her close relatives and bequeathed her estate to the solicitor. 

The court found: 

“It is clear that the opportunity to acquire great wealth caused the defendant to desert all pretence of performing his duty as a solicitor.” 

Up to this point Campbell had an “unimpeachable” reputation. 

“The breach of duty becomes immeasurably worse when it is plain, as we find it is, that the defendant was well aware of the reasons for Mrs Wright being prepared to make such an extraordinary will … 

“He was aware she was a very wealthy woman and that her position was not as she believed but he took no steps to resolve that state of mind … 

“By sheer dishonesty he took advantage of a mentally incapable woman with an obvious delusion that she was bankrupt in an attempt to acquire assets in the order of half-a-million dollars to which he had neither the moral or legal claim as he must well have known.” 

The court struck him from the jam roll. 

The 1970s inquiry by the NSW Law Reform Commission into the legal profession resulted in a caustic report about the Law Society’s sloppy disciplinary efforts. 

Sir Adrian Solomons (Country Party MLC), the king pin at Campbell’s law shop, attended the court of appeal proceedings and gave your correspondent the evil eye. For all the world, he indicated that having press coverage of his partner’s misconduct was worse that the misconduct itself. 

Political insiders report that at the time the attorney general Frank Walker was subject to a barrage of pressure by the legal establishment on behalf of Campbell. The AG’s response to suggest that the Protho make a move. 

Vale Doug Campbell. 

See: The Prothonotary v Campbell, December 7, 1978