Many solicitors are used to dealing with angry clients, but spare a thought for Clitheroe solicitor Ian Dearing (pictured), whose car was daubed with metal paint.

It will cost £2,000 to fix Dearing’s Honda Legend. If that weren’t bad enough, the perpetrator wasn’t even a client of Dearing’s. ‘He had advice from someone in the firm,’ says Dearing, a consultant solicitor at Steele & Son with Bagot Heyes Solicitors.

He remains phlegmatic. ‘This is part of what goes with being a country solicitor,’ Dearing said. ‘People know who you are, where you are, what you drive.’

But should Dearing ever decide to change career, Obiter recommends he becomes a detective after catching the culprit. ‘When we saw the paint and looked in the immediate vicinity, we saw a bag from [the local department store],’ Dearing recalls. ‘We looked inside [and there was a] receipt for a tin of paint. I called [the store] and said “do not destroy your CCTV”.’

The perpetrator pleaded guilty to causing £2,000 worth of damage.

 

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