What is the effect of releasing funds to a client without completing the terms of a trust agreement?

Law Society counsel forcefully argued that the Respondent was in breach of his undertaking by releasing the funds to his client without completing the terms that had been imposed upon him. She relied on the case of Witten v. Leung [1983] A.J. No. 883 (QB). In that case, the plaintiffs (lawyers) sent the defendants (lawyers) documents on certain trust conditions, which included that the documents were to be returned unused in the event that they could not provide executed copies of the documents within 10 days of being signed. The defendants were not prepared to return the executed documents, and the plaintiffs were successful in obtaining an order that they be delivered to the plaintiffs unconditionally. 4 It is of overarching importance to the practice of law as an honourable profession, that solicitors comply, without reservation or question, with the trust conditions upon which documents have been entrusted to them by other solicitors. Unless the solicitors who have sent documents to other solicitors on trust conditions can rely with absolute confidence upon those trust conditions being observed, the edifice of trust between solicitors, upon which so much of the efficient service to the public depends, will crumble. It is in the public interest that this confidence be maintained. This concern merits paramountcy over any effect that judicial measures taken to ensure maintenance of that confidence may have upon the legal or equitable rights and obligations of the solicitors’ clients or those of other persons.