Court of Appeal overturns reprimands against lawyer

Iceland’s Court of Appeal has overturned a disciplinary ruling against lawyer Ómar R. Valdimarsson, finding that Reykjavik District Court lacked standing to file the complaint, mbl.is reported on Thursday.

The ruling by the Lawyers’ Disciplinary Committee had criticised and warned Ómar over his conduct during a dispute with District Court judge Sigríður Hjaltested about defence fees. The Court of Appeal said his emails and other conduct were directed personally at two judges, not at the court as an institution. If the judges felt personally wronged, they should have filed the complaint themselves; the chief judge could not do so on the court’s behalf. The court therefore annulled the disciplinary ruling on procedural grounds.

The dispute began in November 2023, when Ómar acted as defence counsel in a major criminal case at Reykjavik District Court. After a six-day trial and reviewing thousands of pages of documents, he submitted a timesheet claiming 594 hours of work. Sigríður approved just 43.7 per cent of the hours, awarding him just over ISK 7.8 million. The article says this left Ómar bearing 67.35 per cent of his work himself.

On the day the judgment was delivered, Ómar emailed Sigríður questioning the fee decision. He wrote that he understood it could no longer be changed, but said he had expected the court to ask defence lawyers for a more detailed timesheet if it considered that necessary. He added that he would be paid for 43.7 per cent of the time spent on the case, asking whether the remainder was intended as “some kind of compulsory service for the state.”

Ómar said he ran a small law firm employing six people and that, as a result of the decision, he had to decide which one to dismiss before Christmas. The following day, after informal conversations with other lawyers who had served as defence counsel or legal representatives, he emailed them under the subject line “Wage theft in S-1075/2023.” He asked whether they would join a letter strongly protesting the decision and declaring that they would no longer take criminal cases before Sigríður.

Ómar later responded to a notice from the chief judge about a custody hearing, describing Sigríður’s decision as a possible violation of the European Convention on Human Rights and calling the document “probably just for show.”