A veteran civil litigator who was ordered to pay nearly £11,000 in costs over a failed Solicitors Regulation Authority prosecution has claimed he was just an ‘easy target’ for the regulator.
David Mark Turner, admitted in 1992, was accused of dishonestly providing misleading information to a small building firm by failing to inform them of the true outcome of a summary judgment hearing against them.
The allegations were all dismissed by the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal - which found Turner had acted honestly - last month, but the panel awarded the Solicitors Regulation Authority costs of £10,854, stating the regulator ‘had been required to bring its case’.
Speaking to the Gazette, Turner, who was compliance officer for legal practice at Kitson Boyce at the time of the incident, said: ‘I was pondering whether to refer myself. I thought the allegation was very weak, but I thought I had better be whiter than white. I had not had any regulatory issues in 30 years.’
The firm prepared a self-report for Turner, which it submitted to the SRA on 3 August 2021. Shortly afterwards Turner, who said he had not seen the self-report before it was submitted, withdrew it. But in November 2023, the SRA informed Turner they would refer him to the SDT.
Although in practice at the time of the incident, Turner had by then semi-retired, adding having the investigation hanging over him ‘took a toll’. ‘I would not wish this upon anyone, it is always on your mind’, he said. He now works for Nexa Law as a litigation partner.
Turner provided character references from other solicitors: the SDT remarked that, ‘unusually’, he even had a character reference from his client in the case. This stated that he was ‘considerate, frank, and objective in difficult circumstances’ and that he should not suffer.
Despite this, the SDT made the award of costs, which Turner had to bear in addition to his own legal costs. ‘I can tell you I find it strange and harsh. I just think it was a very harsh decision’, he said.
Commenting on the case, Turner said: ‘It should have been sorted out just internally and not referred to the SDT. It is almost as if the SRA want to be seen to be bringing prosecutions and they pick some easy targets such as myself.
‘I understand you need regulators and there are some bad apples in the solicitor profession’, Turner said. ‘But we are easy targets people like me, I do not have a glamour practice. It is the way a lot of regulators work. The financial services regulators go after smaller independent financial advisers, they do not go after the big banks.’
His advice to other solicitors facing regulatory action is to ‘keep as cool as you can, have faith in your skills’ and to ‘get legal representation as early as you can’.
Turner is now speaking to the Law Society about a change in the way the SRA displays the details of unsuccessful prosecutions on its website, where acquittals are not prominently displayed. ‘I think it is just unfair to have that there’, he added.
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