Gleeson: Costs sanction may follow dishonesty allegations
A judge has described a letter from a claimant’s solicitors on his draft judgment as “about as far away from the conduct expected of solicitors conducting litigation as it is possible to get”.
Simon Gleeson, a deputy High Court judge who is also a former partner and now a consultant to City giant Clifford Chance, expressed surprise too at a last-ditch effort to question his impartiality because of the firm’s link to a funder of the defendant.
He indicated that sanctions would follow for the solicitors at Keystone Law.
He was ruling on a claim brought by Kenneth Gill over bonus payments he said were due from his former employer, quantity surveying firm Sweett Group (now part of Currie & Brown).
The decision went against Mr Gill and Judge Gleeson recorded that, after circulating the judgment in draft for corrections, he received a 32-page letter, “expressed in combative tones”, from the solicitors, “demanding that I reverse certain of my findings”.
He continued: “This was followed by a further five page letter. These letters sought to introduce new evidence and new arguments on matters which had been considered during the hearing, and to reargue a number of points.
“In effect, the claimant’s solicitors treated the draft judgment as if it were a solicitor’s letter from the other side, and their response disputing it was phrased accordingly.
“I do not need to point out that this is about as far away from the conduct expected of solicitors conducting litigation as it is possible to get.”
The Court of Appeal has made it “crystal clear” that a party may only ask a judge to reconsider part of a draft judgment in the “most exceptional circumstances”, he said.
The judge said he reviewed the points made and was satisfied that none of them raised any issue “which might merit inviting further submissions from counsel”.
A “significant element” of the letters was that they explicitly alleged fraud, he went on, something that counsel had been “extremely careful” not to do during the hearing.
“The letter, by contrast, is free with its allegations that the defendants have destroyed and falsified documents in order to mislead the court. There is an issue here as to whether this conduct should be taken into account in the assessment of costs.”
The letter also “cast aspersions on my impartiality”, on the basis that Clifford Chance had done legal work for one of Sweett’s funders.
“This came as something of a surprise to me, since I had performed internal conflicts checks within Clifford Chance as regards all of the parties to this action,” he said. “The suggestion made here was, however, that I had an interest arising out of my firm’s acting for an uninvolved third party.”
Applying the principles for solicitors who sit as deputy High Court judges – as established by the Court of Appeal in the 1999 case of Locabail (UK) Ltd v Bayfield Properties – Judge Gleeson said the fact that he only discovered this connection after the draft judgment had been circulated “seems to me to be sufficient to dispose of this issue”.
He concluded: “The question of responsibility for the letter, and the appropriate consequences, will need to be considered at a further hearing.
“At this stage it does not seem to me that counsel had any hand in its production or sending, but that point will also need to be clarified in due course.”
A Keystone Law spokeswoman said: “We are aware of the comments contained within the judgment. As this is an ongoing matter, it would not be appropriate for us to comment further at this time.”
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