Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal

Decisions filed recently with the Law Society (which may be subject to appeal) include:

James Alun James and Jonathan Ure

• Application 9748-2007
• Hearing 22 January 2008
• Reasons 10 March 2008

The SDT ordered that the first ­respondent (admitted 1995), of 20 Windsor Street, Uxbridge, Middlesex UB8 1AB, should pay a fine of £5,000; and that the second respondent (admitted 1980), of the same address, should pay a fine of £4,000.

The respondents had been guilty of ­unbefitting conduct in that they had failed to ensure compliance with an undertaking given on 26 May 2004 within a reasonable time; and had failed to respond promptly and/or ­substantively to correspondence received from the Solicitors Regulation Authority. Furthermore, the first respondent had been guilty of ­unbefitting conduct in that he had failed at all or within a reasonable time to ensure compliance with two ­undertakings given on 18 and 26 August 2004 respectively; and had failed to reply promptly or ­substantively to correspondence received from the Law Society. The SDT was dismayed to find that the respondents had appeared before it on an earlier occasion and had had ­allegations substantiated against them. In January 2008, they had admitted failures to comply with undertakings given during the course of ­conveyancing transactions within a reasonable time. The SDT was astounded to find that the ­respondents appeared not to have learned the lesson they might have been expected to learn from their ­earlier appearance before it. Not only had the respondents not complied with undertakings within a reasonable time, but they had failed to respond as they should have done promptly and substantively to letters addressed to them by their own professional body, or those instructed to act on that body’s behalf. That indicated a disdain for their professional regulator which was wholly unacceptable on the part of a member of the solicitors’ ­profession.

The SDT was concerned that the respondents appeared not to have grasped the great importance attached to compliance with ­undertakings. It had, of course, taken into account the fact that the ­undertakings had been discharged but they had not been discharged ­promptly – and that had caused no little inconvenience and anxiety to those placing reliance on the undertakings and, indeed, had placed a mortgage lender in a position where its security had not been perfected, and the respondents themselves in a position where a claim in negligence might lie against them. The SDT found the ­situation created by the respondents and their attitude to be wholly ­unacceptable. It considered it ­appropriate and proportionate to impose financial sanctions on the respondents in figures that reflected their respective culpabilities. The respondents were ordered to pay £2,300 costs, on the basis of joint and several liability.

Paul Norman Beesley, James Benedict McElhinney and Stephen Jac Williams

• Application 9759-2007
• Hearing 10 January 2008
• Reasons 7 March 2008

The SDT ordered that the first respondent (admitted 1988), of Beesley Burgess Williams Solicitors LLP, 1st floor, 216 Tower Bridge Road, London SE1 2UP, should be suspended from practice as a solicitor for three months to commence on 10 July 2008; that the second respondent (admitted 2001), of the same address, should be suspended from practice as a solicitor for three months to commence on 10 July 2008; and that the third respondent (admitted 1988), of the same address, should be suspended from practice for six months to commence on 10 January 2008.

The respondents had been guilty of ­unbefitting conduct in that they had failed to comply with the condition(s), subject to which permission had been granted pursuant to section 42(2) of the Solicitors Act 1974, relating to the employment as a clerk of Mr Bryan Howard Lewis, a former solicitor; they had failed to exercise adequate ­supervision in relation to Mr Lewis, contrary to rule 13 of the Solicitors Practice Rules 1990; and that by virtue of their contravention of the ­condition(s) attached to the section 42(2) approval and/or their failure properly to supervise Mr Lewis, ­contrary to rule 13, they had acted contrary to rule 1 of the rules, in that their conduct had compromised or impaired or was likely to compromise or impair their ­independence or integrity as solicitors, their good repute or that of the ­profession, in relation to certain ­matters conducted by Mr Lewis.

The SDT noted that the respondents were decent, honest, upright solicitors who gave a good service to their clients, complied with important aspects of practice, and that they led unblemished personal lives, giving of their services for charitable purposes or otherwise for the public good. The SDT had noted Mr Lewis’s appalling disciplinary history, including the ­making of a prohibition order by the SDT following his voluntary removal from the roll, and the SDT’s refusal to permit his name to be restored to the roll on a later date, having learned ­during the course of the hearing of that application that Mr Lewis had, subsequent to all of the professional disciplinary ­proceedings brought against him, been convicted of a ­criminal offence ­involving ­dishonesty. The Law Society clearly was fully aware of Mr Lewis’s ­professional and criminal records and had nevertheless considered it ­appropriate to grant ­permission for him to be employed within the ­solicitors’ profession. The Law Society had sought to impose a number of stringent conditions on those to whom permission to employ Mr Lewis was granted to provide ­safeguards to the public and to the good reputation of the solicitors’ profession. Mr Lewis had acted in breach of those conditions. The SDT accepted that his breaches had not been authorised by the respondents and had taken place ­without their knowledge. The wholly unacceptable way in which Mr Lewis conducted a number of ­conveyancing transactions would have been ­prevented if proper checks of his files had been maintained.

The SDT had taken into account the fact that Mr Lewis ‘was very economical with the truth when he explained his situation to the respondents’ and had not divulged his disciplinary ­history or his criminal conviction. It accepted that the respondents, the third respondent in particular, believed Mr Lewis. While it might have expected the Law Society to have provided full details of Mr Lewis’s professional ­history to the respondents, it was open to them to make full enquiry. The respondents had been put on notice of serious ­misgivings about Mr Lewis by the stringent conditions which the Law Society had sought to impose and by the reference to his disciplinary record in correspondence. The SDT ­recognised that the respondents had not ­deliberately flouted the conditions: the gravamen of their situation was that they had not taken the care that they should have taken. Their failures were serious. The SDT took into account the third respondent’s ­acceptance that he bore the greater level of culpability for what had occurred. The respondents were ordered to pay to pay £14,000 costs on the basis of joint and several ­liability.

Imran Uddin

• Application 9633-2007
• Admitted 2000
• Hearing 1 November 2007
• Reasons 2 January 2008

The SDT ordered that the respondent, of 15 The Holt, London Road, Morden, Surrey SM4 5HP, should pay a fine of £5,000 for unbefitting conduct in that he had failed to disclose material facts to lender clients, contrary to practice rule (1)(c) and (d). While the SDT gave the respondent credit for the high regard in which he was held by other members of the profession, and the community in which he lived and ­practised, and had taken into account the pressures under which he was working at the material time, it could not ignore the fact that the handling of the conveyancing transactions was unsatisfactory in the extreme.

The respondent had badly let down his institutional lending clients and had put them in a position where they were making substantial loans without the benefit of being fully informed of all the relevant circumstances. On the face of it, those transactions were redolent of mortgage fraud, and that was particularly so where the ­mortgage advance appeared to be greater than the price paid to ­purchase the property, and where the respondent himself had become the purchaser of the property. The SDT had taken into account the ­respondent’s recognition of the ­seriousness of his failures, his remorse, the anxiety that the matter had caused to him and the effect on his health, together with the fact that he had taken a course to increase his knowledge of that area of ­conveyancing and he had put in place systems at his firm to ensure that such errors could not occur again in the future. The respondent was ordered to pay £7,250 costs.