part of a $1.6 million bankruptcy case.

Mr. Hall, a former Progressive Labour Party MP, is immersed in bankruptcy proceedings after being ordered to pay the cash to a former client's estate.

And Chief Justice Austin Ward yesterday made an order to appoint an official receiver of Mr. Hall's finances.

Mr. Hall, who did not appear in court and was unrepresented, was unavailable for comment.

But lawyer Saul Froomkin appeared in court for the plaintiff, Betty McMahon, and her two joint receivers Paul Hubbard and John Boden.

Mrs. McMahon launched a writ against her former lawyer for $1,609,740.63.

Mr. Hall was ordered to pay the full amount, plus simple interest at seven percent in a chambers hearing last December.

He also lost his house, at 42 Mount Hill, Pembroke, when it was auctioned off for $640,000 in February.

It had been placed on the auction list because the mortgage was foreclosed.

It is not the first time Mr. Hall has been in trouble with bankruptcy lawyers.

He was declared bankrupt in May, 1983 after proceedings against him by the Bank of Butterfield.

Bank officials claimed he owed almost $500,000 -- and Mr. Hall's bankruptcy lasted almost five years.

Mr. Hall, who now lives in Harrington Sound Road, Smith's Parish, had been stopped from practising law following his last bankruptcy case and returned to take up court cases in March, 1988.

Mr. Justice Ward, who made the receivership order yesterday, confirmed it now "appeared to the court'' that Mr. Hall had not complied with a bankruptcy notice by the February 26 deadline.

Mrs. McMahon is the widow of Canadian millionaire industrialist Frank McMahon, who died in his sleep at his Paget home in 1986.