Fordham: Protecting the integrity of the court
The High Court has refused to extend time for a former solicitor to appeal against being struck off in 2017 and in any event struck out the grounds for citing 25 non-existent cases.
Venkateshwarlu Bandla denied using AI to draft the grounds of appeal and said he had just used Google but not checked the veracity of the results.
Mr Justice Fordham said: “The court needs to take decisive action to protect the integrity of its processes against any citation of fake authority.
“There have been multiple examples of fake authorities cited by the appellant to the court, in these proceedings. They are non-existent cases. Here, moreover, they have been put forward by someone who was previously a practising solicitor.”
The judge said this justified striking out the grounds of appeal as an abuse of process.
Mr Bandla, 52, qualified in 2007 and from 2012 ran his own firm, Ven Solicitors, in South-East London.
After not responding to strenuous Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) efforts to contact him after December 2015 – even tracking him down to the village in India where his mother lived – the regulator intervened in the firm.
In May 2017, the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal (SDT) struck him off for dishonestly telling the SRA that the firm had insurance cover for 2015/16 when it did not and for abandoning his practice. The SDT hearing proceeded in his absence.
In seeking to extend time for his appeal, Mr Bandla claimed that he never received the SDT documents, but Fordham J said he was “wholly unable to rely” on what Mr Bandla had told him – his evidence was inconsistent, while a process server had a photograph of him receiving notice of the SDT hearing in India.
The judgment was posted to him there and in any case was available online; Mr Bandla admitted he had internet access in the village.
Mr Bandla claimed that the failure to appeal for over seven years was because, from August 2015 to February 2024, he was suffering from schizophrenia so severe that he was “unable to understand things” and “unable to communicate”.
“The difficulty which the appellant has – which in my judgment is insurmountable – is that there are very clear gaps in the evidence relating to his mental health condition,” Fordham J said.
“There are gaps in terms of relevant periods of time. But there are also gaps in terms of the severity of the condition.”
There was “no supporting evidence at all” to explain how it prevented him from lodging his appeal until last year, although the judge acknowledged there was “some documentary evidence” to support the fact that Mr Bandla was suffering mental ill-health when he travelled to India in November 2015.
Fordham J also considered that the underlying appeal had little merit. The SDT judgment showed it was aware that Mr Bandla had mental health difficulties, while “the argument that there was a lack of due process on the part of the SRA is, in my judgment, thin to the point of invisibility”.
He found similarly in relation to Mr Bandla’s challenge to the SDT process.
The judge went on: “It really comes to this. The appellant – with no evidential support – has sought to turn an evidenced case in which he is said to have misled his regulator about the firm’s insurance into an unevidenced case in which he asserts that he was himself the victim of a fraud by the broker.
“And there has never been an explanation of what sense it would have meant for the broker – the same agent who had successfully sourced insurance cover for the firm in the two previous years – now to be misleadingly stating that there was a non-existent policy; still less instructing the use of a false and previous policy number.”
He had “no hesitation” in refusing the application for an extension of time before addressing the fake citations.
The judge also noted that the papers before him included CVs which said Mr bandla had actually been working as a conveyancer at West Wing Solicitors between 2016 and 2023. The SRA is investigating this.
Mr Bandla claimed that the dates were wrong and “altered unknowingly” by Microsoft Word.
Fordham J said: “I found it quite impossible to understand that as an explanation of the contents of those documents. That was, in my judgment, a relevant reinforcing feature when considering what to make of the veracity and reliability of what has been put by the appellant before this court.”
He also ordered Mr Bandla to pay the SRA’s costs of nearly £25,000 on the indemnity basis and refused an application for permission to appeal.
Anon 
I’m guessing the article wasn’t checked after the AI edits either 🤣. Is the appellant Venkateshwarlu Bandla, Mr Miah, or are they the same person?
Separately, with the introduction of new technology, some teething issues are inevitable. Even courts regularly make factual and procedural errors in judgments. Striking off solicitors for using emerging technology at this stage is like living under a rock—a system stubbornly resistant to change. By all means, issue fines or rebukes where appropriate, but strike-offs in these circumstances are simply astonishing.