Office for the Supervision of Solicitors - responses to inquiries - protected by absolute privilege

Gray v Avadis: QBD (Mr Justice Tugendhat): 30 July 2003

The defendant made statements about the claimant's mental health during the course of an investigation by the Office for the Supervision of Solicitors invoked by the claimant into the defendant's legal services.

At a case management conference in relation to proceedings brought later by the claimant for, among other things, libel, Master Leslie decided that the statements were absolutely privileged.

The claimant appealed against the decision.

The appellant in person; Lorna Skinner (instructed by Reynolds Porter Chamberlain) for the defendant.

Held, dismissing the appeal and following guidance of the House of Lords in Trapp v Mackie [1979] 1 WLR 377, that the principle that absolute privilege attached to words spoken or written in the course of giving evidence in proceedings in a court of justice had long been extended to evidence given before tribunals which acted in a manner similar to that in which courts of justice act and that, in the light of its powers and procedures and the consequences of its investigations, the Office for the Supervision of Solicitors was the kind of tribunal to which the principle should be so extended.