A solicitor’s appeal against a Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal decision has been dismissed, with a High Court judge describing her conduct of litigation ‘troubling’.
Sadaf Ijaz, admitted in 2002, received a written rebuke from the Solicitors Regulation Authority after the regulator found she had deliberately failed to comply with court orders requiring her to pay costs. Ijaz appealed the decision. The SDT dismissed the appeal and ordered her to pay the SRA’s costs. Ijaz appealed the SDT’s decision. She did not attend and was not represented at the hearing.
Alan Bates, sitting as a deputy judge of the High Court, began his written judgment in Sadaf Ijaz v Solicitors Regulation Authority Limited with concerns over Ijaz’s conduct of the proceedings.
He said: ‘Despite that the appellant is herself a solicitor and has been represented in this appeal by her own law firm (a firm in which she is the principal solicitor), a feature of the way these proceedings have been conducted on her behalf has been a high degree of failure to comply with procedural requirements and to progress the appeal competently.
‘Regrettably, the conduct of the proceedings in the SDT on her behalf was likewise characterised by very late applications, including an application to admit fresh evidence, and applications for adjournments.
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‘I do not know whether the appellant’s litigation conduct has been part of a deliberate strategy to impede and delay the progress of proceedings, or is attributable to an unduly casual approach to procedural requirements and deadlines, or has some other underlying cause. But I find it troubling that a solicitor on whom clients rely for legal advice and assistance has apparently been unable to ensure that her own proceedings were conducted competently.’
Ijaz’s notice was not accompanied by any ground of appeal, as is the norm, and ‘there are no appeal ground properly before the court’, the judgment said, adding that ‘the setting out of grounds of appeal is, in my view, [an] essential requirement for bringing an appeal’.
The appeal grounds ‘belatedly’ sought to be introduced to proceedings by Ijaz had no merit, the judge found.
The appeal was dismissed but, even if the proposed grounds of appeal had been admitted, the judge ‘would still have dismissed the appeal’ as none of the three grounds had any merit.
