AN HEIRESS embroiled in long-running legal battles with her father has been ordered to pay fees she owes to law firm Carey Olsen and had her claim of professional misconduct against the company struck down.
In a recent judgment, Tanya Dick-Stock – daughter of businessman and former Seigneur of St John’s manor John Dick – was ordered to pay £267,242 as well as interest and legal costs to Carey Olsen for services they provided between June and November 2018.
Mrs Dick-Stock hired the firm for advice in relation to Jersey trusts for which she is the beneficiary. She has contended in courts in Jersey and the US that her trusts – set up when her parents were still married – were later raided by her father.
Mrs Dick-Stock said that she and her husband, Darrin, discovered a stash of hundreds of thousands of documents relating to the former trust company La Hougue and other entities in St John’s Manor in 2012, as they prepared for their wedding, and claimed these documents supported a fraud on her father’s part. Mr Dick claims that the whole family, including himself, were victims of a fraud costing them tens of millions. He dismissed his daughter’s claims as ‘delusional’ when asked about them by CNBC earlier this year.
The manor house, where Mrs Dick-Stock spent much of her childhood, sold in 2020 for a reported £17.5 million.
According to the judgment, Carey Olsen terminated Mrs Dick-Stock’s retainer in December 2018 and started legal action to collect the money owed. But Mrs Dick-Stock filed a countersuit against the law firm, claiming professional negligence.
In making a summary judgment on the matter in April, Advocate Matthew Thompson, acting as Master of the Royal Court, did so in Mrs Dick-Stock’s absence.
He noted that no further action had been taken on Mrs Dick-Stock’s counterclaim since its initial filing. Further, Mrs Dick-Stock became barred from the Royal Court for other unpaid costs in 2019.
No attempt has been made to have the debarment order lifted, the judgment said.
Advocate Thompson’s judgment said allowing three years to pass without advancing her countersuit against Carey Olsen in any way was an abuse of process. The professional negligence claim was struck off.
‘As a consequence of striking out the counterclaim, the relevant threshold for granting summary judgment and for the plaintiffs’ claim was met because there was no defence in place any more to the claim for unpaid fees,’ he said. ‘Accordingly, I granted summary judgment.’
The Stocks have been critical of the Jersey authorities in the international media over the past few years. They say there has been a refusal to investigate and the matter was intentionally mishandled because of conflicts of interest within the authorities and the ‘Jersey Way’.
