A firm can continue to act for its client after a Family Division judge dismissed a litigant in person’s application over an alleged conflict of interest.
Nageena Khalique KC, sitting as a deputy High Court judge, dismissed the defendant’s application seeking an order that Birketts LLP cease acting for the claimant over proceedings concerning a property.
The defendant, named as A in the judgment, was married to the claimant until their divorce in Italy in 2023.
Sebastian Burrows, now a partner at Birketts, was a partner at Stowe Family Law when Stowe acted for A. Burrows resigned in September 2025 and was subsequently placed on ‘garden leave’. The defendant engaged Stowe between January and December 2025 before terminating his retainer with the firm.
The judgment noted Burrows ‘no longer had access to any documents or material or client information at Stowe between those dates or after leaving Stowe’.
It added: ‘Mr Burrows commenced working with Birketts on 13 April 2026. By this time, i.e. before Mr Burrows joined Birketts, the claimant’s case was already fully pleaded by her legal team in a different department to the one Mr Burrows later joined, and no new evidence has been disclosed, shared or relied upon since he joined the firm.’
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Finding no conflict of interest, the judge said: ‘The defendant has failed to establish the factual foundation necessary to justify the relief sought and…even if I am wrong about that, there is no real risk of disclosure. The application must therefore be dismissed.’
The judge was ‘unable to accept’ the defendant’s case that ‘"imputed knowledge" is itself sufficient to prevent Birketts from acting’. She found there was ‘simply no evidence which leads me to conclude that disclosure has arisen’ from a deliberate act, inadvertent disclosure or unconscious influence or subconscious influence.
Burrows is ‘fully cognisant of his professional obligations and conduct in respect of former clients and has not breached them; his integrity can be relied upon to continue to uphold those professional standards’, the judge said.
Dismissing the application, meaning that proceedings can continue with Birketts remaining on record for the claimant, the judge said: ‘The existence of a former professional relationship does not itself establish current possession of confidential information. Nor does the mere possibility that information was once known. Evidence is required. The evidence before me is that Mr Burrows remembers nothing. I accept that evidence.’
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