Tribunal: Misled by solicitor
A solicitor with mental health issues who settled an employment tribunal (ET) claim without consulting her client has been struck off.
Alison Clare Banerjee said that concealing the true state of three clients’ cases from them was to “avoid embarrassment”, and that her decision making was impacted by her mental health deteriorating.
The Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal (SDT) said her actions had caused “significant harm to the clients, preventing them from pursuing their claims”.
It also rejected her request for anonymity, saying that while it had “compassion” for her health problems, “it was not satisfied that there was cogent evidence of an immediate risk to her life that could not be sufficiently ameliorated by other actions of the state such as by the NHS”.
To allow it would be a “disproportionate derogation from the principle of open justice”.
Ms Banerjee, 60, qualified in 2010 and worked at Peterborough-headquartered Hunt & Coombs. She was suspended by the firm in February 2023 and resigned shortly thereafter.
According to a statement of agreed facts and outcome approved by the SDT, she acted for the claimant in each of the three employment cases under scrutiny.
Her conduct of a preliminary hearing led to a wasted costs order, which ‘Client A’ only discovered three months later when he searched for himself online. Ms Banerjee reassured him that he would not have to pay it.
She had misled the ET by claiming that, due to email problems, she only received key documents from the other side just before the hearing, when there was no evidence of such problems.
Ms Banerjee further told Client A that an upcoming hearing had been postponed due to lack of staff at the ET and that it could be one to two years before a new hearing date was received.
However, at the same time she accepted and signed a settlement agreement, which Client A only became aware of when he contacted the ET directly a few weeks later.
It was Client A’s complaint that led Hunt & Coombs to examine Ms Banerjee’s other files.
The SDT heard that she had told Client B in September 2021 that there was an offer on the table for her claim. This was not true and, despite chasing, Client B heard nothing more until February 2023, when the firm asked if her file could be closed due lack of activity.
Soon after, the firm advised Client B to seek independent legal advice as it was no longer able to act due to limitation issues with her claim.
Chased for an update on his case in September 2022, Client C was told that the hearing was listed for the following March. This was untrue too.
When Client C was told in March 2023, he instructed the firm to make a settlement offer. It was refused and Client C did not have the financial means to pursue the matter further, so he dropped the claim.
In non-agreed mitigation, Ms Banerjee said she was “struggling immensely with her workload and progressing her cases”; as the only employment solicitor across Hunt & Coombs’ five offices. She was also the solicitor who dealt with statutory declarations and certifying documents.
She did not tell Client A or the firm about the wasted costs order “through sheer embarrassment” and panic. Her intention was to pay it herself.
Ms Banerjee said that, between Christmas 2022 and the New Year, she was “at her breaking point due to acute stress and was feeling overworked”. When the other side offered a settlement, she accepted it without consulting Client A.
As a result of the pressure she felt, her mental health deteriorated. “She felt as though her only option was to tell the clients what they wanted to hear, simply to stop them from continuously emailing her.” She accepted that she had been dishonest.
The mitigation argued that the breaches were the result of a solicitor “who was mentally unwell”. After leaving the firm, Ms Banerjee said she was diagnosed with depression, placed on medication and continued to struggle, having suicidal thoughts.
The SDT acknowledged that she had an otherwise exemplary record in the profession but concluded that, despite her health issues, only a strike-off was appropriate, given that her misconduct involved “serious, deliberate, and repeated acts of dishonesty, misleading both clients and the employment tribunal over a period of time”.
Ms Banerjee was also ordered to pay costs of £12,000.
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