The disgraced claimant to the fortune of Nina Wang Kung Yu-sum deserved a retrial due to poor legal counsel and misdirection of the jury, the High Court heard on Monday.

Peter Chan Chun-chuen, formerly known as Tony Chan, has exhausted all judicial avenues in his civil case to secure the estate of the late Nina Wang, who had been Asia's richest woman. But Chan, a former barman-turned feng shui consultant to the stars, is back in court in a bid to overturn a 12-year prison sentence.

Chan is currently serving time for his criminal conviction over forging Wang's will, which he first produced nearly nine years ago, sparking the latest struggle over the fortune behind Wang's Chinachem empire.

Chan's counsel James Wood faulted his client's former lawyer, Andrew Kan, for failing to provide Chan's criminal case hearing "with the support expected from a defense council", submitting to a panel of three judges. Chan's jury conviction for forgery rested on lies attributed to Chan during his civil case over Chinachem's fortune.

Wood said lies in themselves were not necessarily proof of guilt under Hong Kong's common law system. This recognized that some lies were not sufficient evidence of a crime and may have been told to bolster a weak case, to protect a third party or out of panic to cover up disgraceful behavior.

Wood noted Kan originally planned to detail the lies uncovered in Chan's civil case during his subsequent criminal trial. But Kan had failed to do so despite repeated queries from the trial judge.

The now deceased Kan had a "spontaneous approach to advocacy", Woods said, adding it "was not particularly structured".

Chan's chance for a fair criminal trial was compromised before it even started, Wood said. He said a massive media frenzy had cemented public opinion against him, with no less than 229 articles relating to the probate civil case published in Hong Kong newspapers. Meanwhile Chan's solicitors had documented roughly 1,500 articles published over a three-year period in the run up to the latest appeal - a rate of around two stories a day.

Chan's legal team is also hoping to win a retrial on the strength of poor direction given to the jury prior to their deliberation, submitting they received improper direction as to prosecution witness statements which supported Chan's defense case. They are also challenging the integrity of a key prosecution witness, Gilbert Leung, who has become embroiled in a separate forgery case over land purchases in the New Territories.

Wood's criticism of Chan's former lawyer comes less than a month after Kan's death from a heart attack at the age of 57, while another former counsel for Chan succumbed to cancer. The police officer in charge of Chan's case died last year.

Wood declined to respond when asked whether he was a superstitious man.

tim@chinadailyhk.com

(HK Edition 09/22/2015 page6)