Legal Ombudsman delays complaints publication

Consumer rights heros, often unpaid and unappreciated, have undermined the traditional legal profession for years which will eventually mean a new legal world owned by spivs, investment bankers and hand bag snatchers, run by customer service muppets who don't know what they are doing. The consumer will suffer as a result of this especially when the spiv owner directors run off with the money when their limited liability legal factories go to the wall. DON'T YOU KNOW WHEN YOU ARE BEING PLAYED BY THE BIG BOYS IN THE CITY? and why not do something useful - become a Neighbourhood Watch Commander for instance!

Can we get away from the myth that someone who runs LeO has to have thorough legal knowledge.

If not, perhaps you could explain why in depth legal knowledge is essential, or even desirable for the role.

In my view there are two choices:-

1) Have a non-legally qualified Ombudsman.

2) Have a legally qualified Ombudsman.

Either would be fine, subject to caveats:-

If the choice is to have a non-legally qualified service then anyone with a modicum of common sense would appreciate that the said service ought not to judge legal matters. In a way, this is what the old Legal Complaints Service did, by making a distinction between "poor service", "misconduct" and "negligence".

Of course the non-legally qualified ombudsman is what we have, and the service takes complaints about everything. They are also currently lobbying to get the right to award redress of £150,000 and deal with third party complaints.

So Mr I-bought-a-farm-shed-which-didn't-have-planning-permission (the one who flooded these forums with spam posts to his solicitors from hell website) goes to a lawyer who applied for planning permission. That gets rejected. They then go to the Planning Inspector, and lose after a bitterly contested hearing.

Mr Claimant complains to Legal Ombudsman and says that the lawyer never presented his case correctly, because they refused to discuss permitted development rights and adduced evidence of business use without adducing evidence that the business was owned by his son who lived there.

So Kelly Matthews, you tell me - how can the Legal Ombudsman possibly know if that is poor service or not? How would you decide whether that is poor service or not?

Anon: 14:21pm

I would agree. But trying to get any sensible point across to Domcoop when he is in this mood is a waste of time. He is old school and follows old school ways.

Also I would imagine he has just come back from the traditional Friday pub lunch. That might account for his belligerence.

Of course - Domcoop is always right.

I am sure if he had his way LeO would be full of highly experienced solicitors dismissing virtually all the complainants as timewasters - citing ancient case law. After all, these complainants should have known what they were letting themselves in for and the law is the law after all.

Some of the comments here only serve to confirm to readers that many of you still live in the dark ages.

It is simple, if you have nothing to hide then you have nothing to worry about.
But if you have something to hide then you must have something to worry about.

I am waiting for the next big up roar in our increasing corrupt society when the legal profession are up against the parliamentary committee, the toothless SRA have a lot to answer to. It is sad when you read the SRA publication decisions on conduct (those are the ones that we can publicly read about), is it too easy to behave like that knowing that penalties are not tough enough?, or is that, "Jo Public" are thick and will trust a professional when asking for advise.

I want Adam Sampson to be transparent and highlight the rogues of the legal profession, just like the FSA have highlighted the recent findings with Barclays. Either he does his job properly or continues to let down the public by not protecting them, but instead protects the profession.

So bollocks to delaying this. Crap or get off the pot Sampson, the public needs protecting now!

I know Domcoop asked a question earlier. He mentions the case of a man who put his story on Solicitors From Hell and spammed the details here. Domcoop asked how the LeO would be able to deal with his complaint without legal knowledge concerning allegations of negligence. The poster above also asks how a LeO investigator would know whether or not the law has been correctly applied investigating legal rogues.

I will not comment too much on the individal case as I do not know the full background but will certainly see if I can go some way to providing a response to the view that the LeO is unfit to decide disputes which arise from legal matters. I assume that is broadly what what the critics here believe.

I do not have an in depth knowledge of LeO and do not work for them but I think there are a few observations I would make just by carrying out some research on their website and other ombudsman schemes. So, what I say is based on a few observations of ombudsman schemes as a whole and am happy to be corrected on any specific points concerning LeO.

1) As far as I can tell, the LeO are really no different to other successful ombudsman schemes in other industries and professions.
2) They do not act in the way a court would. For example, they probably do not hold many hearings and in terms of complaints against solicitors, are an alternative to the courts. They may not be bound by the law but will take it into acccount. Its terms of reference are likely to be what is fair and reasonable.
3) They are independent and impartial and have to be seen as such and therefore will consider complaints from both points of view. It makes sense for their caseworkers to come from a variety of backgrounds.
4) Their caseworkers will not necessarily be qualified in the subject matter which has led to the complaint. They will however have a working knowledge of handling disputes, relevant codes of practice and regulations, processes, compliance and good practice. These caseworkers will come from a variety of backgrounds but I would imagine many will be legally qualified - the point being that legal expertise is available if it is required in the decision making process.

There may also be some disputes (not many I would imagine) where the LeO might say that a particular case is not best suited to its less formal processes and remit and is more appropriate for resolution in court. So to allay some concerns expressed here, there may be some cases which cannot be dealt with. However this is probably more to do with the more limited remit of LeO than any lack of legal expertise. The LeO is most unlikely to be able to adjudicate on issues which have been decided in the courts or go behind the decision of a judge. For example, in the case Domcoop has described, the caseworker could not intervene in the decision of the judge on the merits of the case as presented. However, he or she could look at the question of negligence by studying the process followed by the solicitor and whether an act or ommision might possibly have prejudiced the outcome or the complainant in some other way.

To explain further let's consider a more straight forward and common type of scenario than Domcoop's case - but in different industry.

A dispute arises from a cowboy builder who builds an extension which starts falling down in the weeks following its construction. The customer complains and the builder denies liability.

I am not sure whether there is a builders ombudsman but if there is and it worked along the lines of other schemes, a caseworker will be assigned. He or she will have access to building regulation rules, codes of practice, testimony and documents from each party and access to information on the construction of extensions. However, the assigned caseworker was not a builder in his previous job and has never built an extension in his life. Does that make him unsuitable to adjudicate in the same way as is being suggested that LeO caseworkers/ombudsman without in depth legal knowledge are?

Of course it does not.

The caseworker will review the evidence he has from the parties and look to see whether there are any independent surveys/reports describing how the fault occurred. The caseworker will then consider this and decide how persuasive the findings of the report are. If the report suggests that the builder was negligent then the caseworker will ask the builder to put right the problem or invite him to provide an independent report to refute the findings and so on. It really is not necessary for the caseworker to have been a builder before. All he or she really needs is some intelligence, impartiality, common sense, know how to deal with difficult people and have access to information and experts if necessary.

I would imagine the LeO acts in a similar way. All the information required to reach a reasonable decision will be available in the majority of cases. So, it really is not rocket science. In most cases I would guess the law simply does not come into the decision made - the only difference being in these cases is that one of the parties is a qualified solicitor - rather than a qualified builder, qualified mechanic or a qualified banker. If there was a car mechanic ombudsman would you want your complaint about faulty repairs to your car be decided solely by ex-car mechanics? Think about it.

I sense the criticism is simply because solicitors object to someone perceived to be less qualified than themselves making decisions which affect them and they are finding it increasingly difficult to hide behind their legal expertise to deflect justified criticism.

As I say, I am happy to be corrected. In fact, as an observer I would be interested in Mr Sampson's views as I feel there are alot of uncorrected misunderstandings on here about the role and purpose of LeO and other bodies.

anon

I guess that is a point worth discussing.

I had another look at the LeO site earlier. Above I made a point about complaints about negligence and it seems there is a fine line between what LeO can consider and what it cannot - or chooses not to. For example, the guidance on the site seems to say that the LeO would not conclude that an act of negligence has occurred (presumably that would be for the regulator) but might look at a complaint which alleges negligence purely in terms of poor service. Their remit might therefore be even more limited than I indicated above. Possibly the case Domcoop mentioned would not be accepted but I am not yet quite clear what criteria they use when deciding.

In this respect it would seem LeO might be different from some other ombudsman schemes in that they are more limited in what they can or decide to look at.

This is an interesting page with some stats on complaints received/type of complaints etc.

http://www.legalombudsman.org.uk/aboutus/statistics.html

I think the point to make is perhaps contributors and readers here are assuming they look at all sorts of legal complaints when perhaps this is not really the case.

He went on to say: “Law is all about opinions – any contested case by definition requires there to be at least two competing opinions. But that does not mean than one cannot form a judgement about whether the advice given by a lawyer is appropriate. The rule is simple: if the advice given is the sort of advice that any reasonable lawyer with a reasonable knowledge of the case and a reasonable mastery of the relevant law would have given, then we are not going to question it.

But if it is the sort of advice that no reasonable lawyer should have given – if the lawyer has plainly ignored a relevant consideration, deadline or piece of legislation – we will have no hesitation in saying so. Of course we will check the difficult cases with a specialist. But in most cases, the sort of mistakes we are talking about will be clear to anyone, lawyer or not"
...........

Thanks for that Anon. That seems to clarify some things. How about this as a scenario which is actually typical of several separate unsuccessful and vexatious libel claims heard in the High Court in recent years.(part of the example below is also real and included in one set of proceedings a few years back)

A client approaches a solicitor after taking part in an argument on an internet bulletin board. The client had started the argument and other participants joined in the spat and name calling starts. Something you see everyday (occasionally on here too)

Amongst other trivia, the claimant is told by one participant to 'grow up' and he informs his solicitor he wishes to sue for defamation on the basis the comment lowers his standing in the eyes of others because they will think he is immature and needs to grow up. The judge describes the claimant's case as totally without merit and that anyone with any knowledge at all of defamation would recognise this.

It is unclear what advice the solicitor gave to his client. Either he incorrectly told his client that there was a reasonable chance of success or the solicitor might have known the case was doomed to failure and was silent on this point and proceeded anyway. In any event, it is clear that proceeding was a waste of time and money. The client complains to the solicitor on the basis he was not advised properly about the very high prospects of failure.

Now, going by the guidance Mr Sampson mentions, surely this is the sort of 'mistake' which is clear to anyone. Libel law can be very complex but there can be no argument here - the solicitors failed. This is the type of situation perhaps where the client could make a legitimate complaint and the ombudsman make a ruling based on the simple facts.

Surely because this situation is not uncommon in High Court libel cases, there must be alot of cases where the LeO (or any sensible person) could conclude without expert knowledge that a solicitor was negligent or/and failed to protect the interests of their client. After all, if the claimant here had gone to a different solicitor one would have hoped that they would have told the claimant in no uncertain terms he would lose.(and told him to grow up too!)

Anyway - the quotation from Sampson does clarify things a bit and the example perhaps demonstrates that you do not have to be a legal expert to make a sound judgement involving legal matters. As he also says, they will consult an expert if required. Sounds reasonable enough to me.

Now, if we turn this around and in the above situation the LeO adopts a strict policy of only taking on lawyers. Would these people reach the same conclusion that the claims were nonsense and the solicitor failed their client? Would they be objective and impartial? I am not sure that they would having read some of the opinions expressed on this site. For example, I have raised the above scenario and other straight forward examples of misconduct before and almost without exception every contributor here has stated they believe the solicitors had done nothing that wrong.

That hardly supports the argument that all LeO caseworkers should be legally qualified.

An excercise perhaps to demonstrate further. Domcoop asked me a question which I answered. I will therefore ask him what conclusion he would reach as a LeO caseworker in the above case. We can then see who agrees with him and who does not. Perhaps if we cannot agree on the outcome, we can ask a expert. .

The initial Statistics on the Legal Ombudsman(LeO) site illustrates that there is a large disparity between the public's perception of what service they expect to receive from a Solicitor and the service that they actually receive. 38,155 complaints in 6 months is a lot of complaints; future statistics could show whether this is an accurate figure over time or whether intervening variables have had an initial impact on this high figure. For whatever reason, only 3,768 cases out of the 38,155 cases (less than 10%) have been accepted for investigation by the LeO and out of those 1,450 resolved (less than 4% of the initial 38,155 complaints). At this point in time, the rudimentary analysis of data on the LeO site poses more questions than it answers.

The LeO is now looking at publishing complaints against individual Solicitors although it is unclear whether this will be all of the complaints or complaints that have been 'watered' down to 10% of complaints - as above paragraph. Then a quarterly table is proposed by the LeO that "summarises the number of complaints each law firm has been subject to........." it is not clear how the number of complaints can be 'summarised' unless Factor Analysis is used but it would be far more transparent to just make all data available. Then, where there is a "pattern of complaints" or it is in the "public interest" the Solicitor or firm of Solicitors can be immediately identified. Again key measurements such as "pattern of complaints" and "public interest" need to be quantified before any meaningful conclusions can be drawn as at the present time they are no more than vague concepts. It is understandable why the publication of such data has been delayed and in these circumstances I think desirable for all - statistics can be brilliant when used properly but detrimental or a waste of time if they are not.

There is debate over whether or not the Chief Ombudsman (I believe that is his title) should be a Lawyer. I believe the rule Mr Sampson uses in deciding whether or not a case has merit is: " if the advice given is the sort of advice that any reasonable lawyer with a reasonable knowledge of the case and a reasonable mastery of the relevant law would have given, then we are not going to question it". In these circumstances it makes no difference whether or not the Chief Ombudsman is a Lawyer as he is judging the merit of complaints on the same criteria as a Lawyer would use! There are also many Solicitors within the LeO who can advise on - and therefore influence - the decisions made by the 'independent'?!
Ombudsman.

The complaints data, that the LeO holds, could have been used efficiently to understand all grievances as perceived by the Public - if anybody had wanted to. I believe that a significant amount of problems experienced by the Public would relate to areas of established Law and standard practice which they would view as being unethical, impractical, lacking common sense, 'consumer unfriendly' ............etc. These Statistics could then have been utilised in reviewing outdated case Laws/Standard practice with the view to establishing some new foundations and principles for a more transparent and 'Client/Consumer/Public' friendly service - if anybody had wanted to. By "hacking off lawyers and complainants in equal proportions" [Mr Sampson, latest Blog on the LeO site] appears to be proof of the ineffectiveness of the Ombudsman rather than a measure of "fairness" and so Mr Sampson is fulfilling his role of tokenism.

If I were the case-handler I would say in my report "I do not think Kelly Matthews has received poor service from the firm. The firm never set out to offer any service to Kelly Matthews, and they appear to have behaved with as much courtesy as could be expected. The firm were instructed by Mr Smith to demand money from Kelly Matthews, not provide Kelly Matthews with a service"

But think about this - how would the caseworker know what Mr Smith did or did not say to the firm, and what the firm did or did not say to Mr Smith? The only way they could is by looking at the private and confidential instructions given by Mr Smith to the firm. And much as it may annoy or upset Kelly Matthews, what Mr Smith said to the firm (and what advice he received in response) is none of Kelly Matthews' business.

Think of this - if a criminal client is convicted and receives a sentence the police don't like because of the mitigation, or is acquitted when the police think they shouldn't have done, could they (or the complainant) complain to the Legal Ombudsman? Should they have the right to inspect the file, looking for evidence that "he did do it after all"?

As for the main topic of this news article, "quango doesn't get round to doing something on time", it's hardly news, is it?

Isn't this debate entirely pointless?

We all know that the Ombudsman was put in place to give solicitors a hard time and a bad reputation. He also knows it, so that is exactly what he will do so that he continues to get his large salary and contribution to his guaranteed pension. The justice of the matters he handles is utterly irrelevant-and will always be so.

The plain fact is that the moral integrity of those in authority over us has been entirely destroyed -and it doesn't matter whether they are banks, MP's, judges, civil servants or any other kind, including many lawyers. You won't lose by betting that any decision they make is one which benefits themselves.

Thank you Anon (14:07) for an excellent post.

I can certainly appreciate the difficulties and conflicts for solicitors when faced with these situations. You also touched on another problem which was highlighted in another discussion on here about solicitors ignoring the protocol for defamation.

If the claimant instructed the solicitor to ignore the protocol then this puts the solicitor at risk of breaching the SRA code of practice. ( Chapter 11: Relations with third parties) The claimant in the case I referred to received his sanction from the court (a civil restraint order) but the law firm, by not complying also opened itself to charges that it took unfair advantage of unrepresented defendants. We have already seen what happened in the copyright file sharing cases (e.g ACS Law) where four or five individuals from firms were disciplined and fined by SRA/SDT for the same breach.

As you, I suspect in this rather exceptional case the solicitor should perhaps have declined the instruction. The various rules and guidance do seem a bit of minefield but I think it is always safest to pay most heed to the SRA guidance. However, solicitors here have often said this guidance is unclear and conflicting too.

Perhaps as you indicated the lesson to be learned here is to seek professional and regulatory advice in these situations rather than make the wrong call and end up in bother.

No, that is not quite correct. Some citizens have forfeited the right to take any case to court. Quite right too when vexatious behaviour leads to mayhem and misery and the administration of justice being brought into disrepute. Cost are not an effective deterrent in many cases. Civil restraint orders and S42 orders are used but they need to be used more and at an earlier stage.

In my opinion conducting vexatious litigation is a type of dishonesty. You don't take someone to court for telling you to grow up unless there is something wrong with you or you are trying to pressure people into giving you money. Particularly when tax payers money is being used for the privilege.

Like everything there has to be a limit and some responsibility. I support the Libel Reform Campaign but always disagree with those who believe it gives the right for folks to say anything they like without consequences. Likewise I have politely asked the person spamming this site to refrain as what he is doing is over the top and counter productive to free speech and sensible debate.

Thank God for all the second generation websites such as solicitors-from-hell.co.uk, cowboysolicitors.com etc etc all of which are doing exactly what the LO should be doing - Warning the general public about the thousands of dodgy solicitors that infest the grubby legal profession.

Please feel free to visit my website

It is quite right to say that on its own running a weak case is not a breach of any rule of conduct. However, running a weak case is more likely to expose you to an increased risk of being accused of taking unfair advantage of another party than if you are running a strong case. Remember the SRA rules and guidance do not include an exhaustive of specific behaviours that might be considered taking unfair advantage. The rules appear to be quite generic and open to some interpretation and discretion by the SRA.

Take these two different scenarios and consider them in the context of SRA guidance on the treatment of others:

1) The claimant is falsely accused of a specific fraud on a bulletin board by a business rival concerning alleged wrong doings in that person's business dealings. The defendant has been sued previously in another matter so has some knowledge of libel cases and can afford a solicitor. It seems that this claim on the face, has a reasonably strong case. The law firm writes to the defendant inviting a settlement saying that in their opinion a court would award no less than £10,000 for defamation.

2) Another claimant takes part in an absurd argument on the same bulletin board and is told by another participant to 'stop wasting his life and grow up'. He decides to sue this unrepresented member of the public but on the face, the claim is hopeless, the defendant knows nothing of defamation law and damages and cannot afford representation. The solicitor writes to the defendant inviting a settlement saying that in his opinion a court would award no less than £10,000 for the 'defamation'.

In the first scenario the case is stronger and the letter is probably O.K. In the second however, the case is very weak and therefore any statement or assertion which is made in the letter of claim is more likely to come under scrutiny - particularly the part which says that the case will be won by their client and any award be at least £10,000. This is deliberately misleading or very misguided and it could be argued that the solicitor is trying to take advantage of the defendant's likely lack of legal knowledge to demand more than would be awarded in court.

Anyway, something along the above lines did happen and several people did pay up large sums for what were trivial and everyday jottings typical of bulletin boards - precisely because they felt intimidated, had no legal knowledge or access to decent legal advice and were under pressure.

So, the point I am making is that potentially there are more pitfalls which follow from conducting a weak case than a stronger one. If conducting a weak case, I think you have to be alot more careful when dealing with the other parties than you would in a stronger one. A demand or statement made by the solicitor in a letter in scenario 1 might be considered acceptable - but the same demand, downright misleading and inappropriate in scenario 2.

Anyway - in addition to the weakness of the claim let us also consider the protocol failures to get the matter into full context in scenario 2:

- Before writing to the defendant the solicitors were aware that a claim had already been issued but did not mention this to the defendant in the letter.
- They demanded a response and reparations from the defendant within 7 days.
- Many other libel claims were made arising out of the same argument on the bulletin board and the solicitor demanded large sums from each participant, taking no account of the risk of over compensation for comments made in the same context.
- The solicitor ignored correspondence from the defendant asking for explanations for the irregularities.
- The solicitor failed to properly spell out the full nature of the claim and the alleged damage to their client by the remarks.
- The solicitors sent out letters of claim in breach of a stay order

As for the comments about the pre action protocol and the SRA Code of Practice I am not sure how relevant they are in terms of taking an unfair advantage and whether the failure to observe the correct procedure was initiated by the claimant's instructions, was due to an ommision by the solicitor or was a deliberate strategy. However, I think that when a regulator considers the overall conduct of the solicitor and the weakness of the case as a whole, he will conclude that there have been breaches regardless of the reasons for it. An instruction from a client to ignore the protocol does not in my opinion overide the requirement to comply with it and treat other parties fairly.

This thread is way, way off topic now. But better the discussion stays here as I am sure Kelly Matthews is already working out how the other article on the LSG website can be skewed to be about libel law.

Anyway, I did misunderstand the question posed. I can not for the life of me understand what possible basis there would be that Mr Smith would ever want to complain to LeO about his solicitors. He asked them to do something. They did it.

And will you stop whittering on about "subsidised by the taxpayer". The firm of solicitors involved did the claim on a no-win no-fee basis, and they lost. They therefore did the work for free. The "taxpayer" waived a court fee of £465. And that's it. Hardly a "subsidy" is it?

In any event, Kelly Matthews, you don't seem to grasp that the purpose of the protocol is not to provide protection for defendants. Failure to comply with it fully - or at all - could not ever amount to a breach of the Outcome you must not seek to take unfair advantage of third parties.

Had they followed the protocol properly:-

• there would have been a longer time to respond, the letter would have been longer and more detailed, and the cost they would have been entitled to seek for having prepared it would have been higher.
• The defendants as litigants in person were highly unlikely to have followed the protocol themselves.
• The Claim would still have been issued.
• A barrister would still have represented Mr Smith pro-bono (and I note that Kelly Matthews still does not blame the barrister for bringing the case, only the solicitor for writing the initial letter).
• The judge would still have found the claim to be hopeless.
• The claim would still have been dismissed.
• The defendants would still have won their case.

You know sometimes life can be inconvenient, and things don't go your way. This attitude - pandered to by the "consumer culture" that each and every inconvenience requires compensation and sympathy for the "victim" - really winds me up.

I got telephoned a few weeks ago by a company saying they were the "Central Meter Registration Service", and that I had to register my electricity meter, otherwise they would cut me off. They then continued to phone every ten minutes until I told the guy that we were recording his calls and I was going to go round to his call centre in Manchester (which I had found the location of by Google) and "register" him. Yes it was inconvenient. Yes I could have ended up signing up to a rip-off company called Opus Energy who were behind this. Yes it took my time up.

So what did I do? Complain, whine and moan, write to the Guardian, go on "Watchdog", complain to Ofgem, the Energy Ombudsman, etc., the Data Protection Commissioner? No.

Kelly - you won your case. Mr Smith lost. What more do you possibly want?

Let me address some of Domcoop’s other comments.

He says:
........
"In any event, Kelly Matthews, you don't seem to grasp that the purpose of the protocol is not to provide protection for defendants. Failure to comply with it fully - or at all - could not ever amount to a breach of the Outcome you must not seek to take unfair advantage of third parties".
...........

I think it is fair to say that the protocol exists for a number of reasons for the benefit of both parties and the courts. Reading the MOJ website, two of the main aims of CPR and the protocol is to save expense and to ensure the parties are on an equal footing – in others words ensuring fairness.

Whilst the defamation protocol was not specifically written to protect defendants against abusive and vexatious claims, clearly the general protection of litigants was in mind when the word/term ‘fair’ and ‘equal footing’ was mentioned. Likewise when the SRA Code was drawn up, it was done so for a number of different reasons - one of which was to address the opposite (unfairness) and taking advantage of the defendant party.

Therefore, contrary to what Domcoop says there are circumstances where non compliance with the protocol may result in breaching the SRA code of practice. To see how it applies in the case mentioned by Domcoop, one needs to read the judgement of Eady J in which he explicitly linked numerous protocol breaches with unfairness and taking advantage of the defendants before him. It is therefore perfectly clear by looking at the SRA rules that the solicitor has breached the rules. A fool can see that. It was not simply a case of the rules being ignored or overlooked resulting in no one really being affected. If this was the case I and other observers would not have been that concerned. No, the observations by the judge suggest the solicitor’s behaviour worked completely against the aims of the protocol and the defendants to the extent that the court was forced to intervene to protect them. The judge's words:
......
"One might well ask, in the language adopted by the Court of Appeal in Jameel, whether "the game is worth the candle". If litigation is being used to exert pressure on people to pay money (whether for charity or otherwise) or to apologise without any regard to the overall merits, solely with a view to avoiding spending money without hope of recovery, then the court needs to ensure that its processes are not being abused".
.........

Anyone who has read the defamation protocol, the observations of the protocol failures by the judge in the case mentioned by Domcoop above and the SRA code of practice can see there is a clear link.

Domcoop then comes out with this:
............
"You know sometimes life can be inconvenient, and things don't go your way. This attitude - pandered to by the "consumer culture" that each and every inconvenience requires compensation and sympathy for the "victim" - really winds me up".
...........

Domcoop rightly says that life can be inconvenient and mentions his example of being inconvenienced. Well, with respect to Domcoop, the situation I described was in a completely different league. This is nothing to do with ‘consumer culture’ etc. It is to do with a completely unacceptable situation where dozens of people with no legal knowledge received vexatious libel claims on their doorstep from a respected law firm demanding money. Many of these people were affected beyond recognition and the financial costs and cost in terms of distress and time was unimaginable. I could describe some of the appalling stories but hopefully you will take my word for it.

Domcoop will also be aware that I have actually spoken out against the ‘compensation’ culture before. He always seems to disagree with me when I have mentioned the poor behaviour of CMCs, vexatious litigants and certain ambulance chasing lawyers who seem to promote the feckless and the 'world owes me a living' cultire . Perhaps he ought to turn his fire on them instead of trivialising the suffering of genuine people who have been hounded by his profession.