Disbarred lawyer Llewellyn Peniston has been ordered to pay more than $30,000 in back rent after a legal battle in which he claimed his son owned the property.

Patrick Bean launched a legal action against Mr Peniston seeking $64,070 in rental arrears, and Mr Peniston launched a counterclaim asking for $820,000 that he claimed he paid to fund Mr Bean’s apartment complex.

According to a Supreme Court judgment by Assistant Justice John Riihiluoma, dated October 2, Mr Peniston had initially filed a strikeout application, arguing that the property was legally owned by his son.

However, Chief Justice Ian Kawaley dismissed the application, stating the claim was without substance.

Mr Peniston added an additional counterclaim in respect of “damages for the construction costs, provisions of all materials, labour, loans and cash advances provided to the plaintiff by the defendant for units 4, 5 and 6 of the development and to all other common interests to the estate development”.

During the hearing, the court heard that Mr Bean and another man bought the Sandys property in 2000 with a view to build condominiums but after a falling out, Mr Bean moved forward with the project alone, taking out a loan from Capital G Bank.

Mr Peniston, who was a practising lawyer at that time, was hired to draw up documents related to the project. In 2004, there were talks about Mr Peniston’s son purchasing the unit, but the court ruled that the sale was never completed.

In 2006, Mr Peniston reportedly moved into one of the units on an verbal agreement that he would pay $4,040 per month in rent to cover Mr Bean’s obligation to the bank.

Mr Bean said that Mr Peniston kept up-to-date on the rent until November 2011, but failed to pay between then and January 2013, when legal proceedings began.

Mr Peniston, however, told the court he had managed the construction costs of much of the condominium project, approving and making payments in connection with the development. To support his case, he presented a series of withdrawal slips and construction vendor receipts.

While several of the slips contained written annotations, which Mr Peniston said demonstrated their association with the project, Mr Justice Riihiluoma wrote in his judgment that some of the annotations on the same documents were written with different inks and in different styles, leading Mr Bean to suggest that some of the notes were added after the fact to bolster Mr Peniston’s case.

“The defendant maintained throughout his evidence that added annotations were contemporaneous,” the judgment states. “In cross-examination, the defendant denied the allegation that the additional annotations were made in preparation for this case.

“The defendant did not have an explanation as to why some withdrawal slips were annotated in different-coloured inks, save that his pen may have run out of ink.”

In his decision, Mr Justice Riihiluoma rejected Mr Peniston’s claim that Mr Bean owed him $820,000 for the development of the property, saying that it was “inherently unbelievable” that he would not mention it until so late in proceedings.

“The defendant did not raise the payment of $820,000 in respect of development costs in his initial defence, nor in the three affidavits he filed in opposition to the plaintiff’s strikeout application, nor was it mentioned, I am told, in the hearing of the strikeout application,” he wrote.

“No correspondence has been produced to show that the defendant communicated with the plaintiff regarding the loan or its repayment.

“The first time the defendant contends he is owed $820,000 by the plaintiff is in his amended defence and counterclaim, dated September 2, 2014.”

Mr Justice Riihiluoma did note that Mr Peniston paid Mr Bean $34,000 in respect to the return of the deposit on the sale agreement for the property.

“There was no explanation of this transaction, but I believe it is safe to conclude that it was not a gift,” he wrote.

He ruled in favour of Mr Bean for the full amount of his claim, $64,070, while ruling in Mr Peniston’s favour to the extent of $34,000 for the return of the deposit.

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