High profile personal injury lawyer Jeremy Diamond didn’t hand over financial documents to Ontario’s legal regulator — after repeated requests over several months — because he didn’t understand what it was asking for, according to his lawyer Brian Greenspan.

Greenspan told an appeal tribunal Wednesday morning that the Law Society of Ontario’s professional misconduct finding against Diamond was “unreasonable” because the only evidence that exists is evidence of a misunderstanding.

“In the words of Cool Hand Luke, what we have is a failure to communicate, not a failure to co-operate, or at least a failure to understand each other,” Greenspan told a three-member Law Society appeal panel, referencing the 1967 movie character played by Paul Newman.

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Diamond’s appeal comes about six months after the lawyer, who is a principal of the firm Diamond & Diamond, faced a reprimand from the law society and $25,000 in costs for failing to promptly provide financial books and records requested as part of a larger investigation into how his firm handled referral fees.

Wednesday’s panel said it will issue a decision at a later date. They could return a judgment ordering a new hearing, find that there was no professional misconduct or uphold the previous decision.

The Law Society had been investigating Diamond and other members of his firm Diamond & Diamond since late 2016. Over many months, law society investigators made several attempts to get information about financial transactions relating to referral fees, according to documents filed by the law society lawyer as part of Wednesday’s appeal.

Diamond was then charged by the law society with failing to cooperate with its investigation. About two months later, Diamond handed over the correct information, according to the law society documents. During an interview with investigators in May 2017, Diamond said that he did, indeed, have the required documentation, but in a different format than had been asked for, the documents say.

A Star investigation published in late 2016 revealed that Diamond’s firm had for many years been attracting thousands of would-be clients and then referring them to other lawyers for sometimes hefty fees. Former clients the Star interviewed said they were often unaware they had been referred, or that a referral fee had been paid. Diamond & Diamond has since told the Star it has a growing roster of in-house lawyers to handle cases.

During Wednesday’s hearing, Greenspan argued that despite the delay, Diamond was “overwhelmingly” cooperative with investigators. Evidence of his “good faith” can be found in the voluminous communications between them, he said.

“We’re not talking about six months of stonewalling or six months of difficulties,” Greenspan told the tribunal. “We’re talking about, throughout that timeframe, a very significant flow of information being provided.”

He told the tribunal there was no evidence to support a finding of “bad faith” on behalf of his client or to support the suggestion that Diamond was playing a cat-and-mouse game with the law society. Greenspan said Diamond had no interest in delaying its work, in part because the investigation was being publicized, “adversely affecting his firm” and raising questions about “the future of his firm.”

Diamond was “obviously interested in clearing the air and doing so in an effective and orderly fashion,” Greenspan said. He said that the law society ultimately found Diamond’s books and records were “appropriate and full and complete.”

“It is a technical issue, not anything that goes to the nature of his practice,” he said.

Kris Borg-Olivier, Diamond’s lawyer during the 2017 hearing, told the Star Wednesday that there was confusion in what the law society had been requesting. “The entire process involved so much back and forth and we were really bending over backwards to make best efforts to be co-operative and be as responsive to their requests as possible,” he said.

Law society lawyer Nisha Dhanoa argued Wednesday that the requests made to Diamond — for financial information about referral fees that all lawyers are required to keep — were “abundantly clear” and that any confusion was “clarified” in repeated communications.

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In response to Greenspan’s comments on the volume of correspondence, Dhanoa noted that it took some 60 communications and more than eight months to get one critical record.

She said the correspondence highlighted the inconsistencies in Diamond’s evidence. She said Diamond sometimes asserted that he didn’t keep certain information and that referral fee transactions were not recorded. Later, Dhanoa said, Diamond responded that he had the information after all.

She told the tribunal that the finding of professional misconduct was “ultimately reasonable” and that Diamond “didn’t act in good faith to provide a substantive response.”