A former television presenter who became one of Britain’s highest-earning solicitors has been struck off for “disgraceful” misconduct in his handling of sick miners’ compensation claims.

Andrew Nulty, who earned £13 million from the claims in one year, joins a growing list of solicitors punished for their role in the coal health scandal, exposed by The Times.

After a three-day hearing before the Solicitors’ Disciplinary Tribunal, he was told by its chairman, Edward Richards, that his behaviour and conduct were “a disgrace to the profession”.

Avalon, a small firm in Warrington, Cheshire, set up by Mr Nulty, 42, in 2001, banked more than £40 million in legal fees for processing more than 30,000 claims under the £8 billion government scheme.

During 2005-06, the firm recorded a £21.2 million turnover with a 73 per cent profit margin (£15.5 million), of which Mr Nulty’s personal share was £13 million. In the list of Britain’s highest-earning solicitors, he was second only to Jim Beresford, senior partner of another firm specialising in coal claims, whose personal profit in the same year was £16.8 million.

Mr Beresford, 58, and Doug Smith, a partner at his Doncaster law firm, Beresfords, were struck off last December for dishonesty and “conscious impropriety” involving miners’ claims.

More than thirty partners at a further ten law firms have been suspended, fined or disciplined for misconduct linked to what has become the world’s largest personal injury compensation scheme. An additional 16 misconduct cases, involving 75 solicitors, are yet to be heard by the tribunal.

In total, solicitors have earned £1.2 billion since 1998 for their work on 760,000 claims brought by former miners with respiratory disease or a crippling hand condition caused by their work underground.

More than 27,000 died before their final compensation was paid and more than 287,000 of those with lung disease received less in damages than the average £2,332 per claim paid in legal fees to their solicitors.

Those fees, fixed by a court agreement and paid by the Government, should have ensured that elderly miners and their widows did not lose a penny from their damages.

Many law firms, however, also sliced money from the compensation awarded to their clients. Some banked it and others made payments to the trade unions that had generated much of their business.

Before he became a solicitor, Mr Nulty’s colourful career included modelling and a spell as a presenter of both a BBC children’s programme and the pop show Hitman and Her. He liked to boast that both his father and grandfather were miners.

Between 2001 and 2003, it was alleged that the firm’s coal-health clients were initially told that their claim would not cost them a penny, but subsequently received a letter saying that Avalon would be charging them a success fee.

Some clients were said to have been charged 15 per cent of the firm’s costs in pursuing their claim, while others lost 15 per cent of their final damages.

The tribunal ruled this week that Mr Nulty and a second Avalon partner, Malcolm Trotter, 35, had compromised their duty to act in their clients’ best interests and damaged the reputation of the legal profession.

Further misconduct was proved over Avalon’s business relationship with a claims-handling company, Sureclaim, which was run by Mr Nulty’s younger brother, Martin.

Separately, Mr Nulty was found guilty of misleading the Department of Trade and Industry in a letter in 2004 in which he claimed that Avalon’s coal-health clients always received 100 per cent of their damages.

Mr Trotter, who left Avalon in 2004, was fined £15,000. Mr Nulty, who left in 2007 and is believed to be living in Spain, was struck off and ordered to make an interim payment of £60,000 towards costs.

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