Judge condemns lawyers who produced “fake citations” to court

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Ritchie: This sort of behaviour should not be left unexposed

The High Court has ordered that a barrister and the solicitors who instructed her be referred to their regulators after providing five fake case citations in their pleadings.

Mr Justice Ritchie said the behaviour of Sarah Forey of 3 Bolt Court and the lawyers at Haringey Law Centre in London had been improper, unreasonable and negligent, and he also ordered them to pay wasted costs.

“It was unreasonable, when it was pointed out, to say that these fake cases were ‘minor citation errors’ or to use the phrase of the solicitors, ‘Cosmetic errors’,” he said.

“I should say it is the responsibility of the legal team, including the solicitors, to see that the statement of facts and grounds are correct. They should have been shocked when they were told that the citations did not exist.”

Ms Forey should have reported herself to the Bar Standards Board and the solicitors to the Solicitors Regulation Authority, the judge said.

“I consider that providing a fake description of five fake cases, including a Court of Appeal case, qualifies quite clearly as professional misconduct.”

They had been acting for Frederick Ayinde, who was homeless, in his claim for priority housing from the London Borough of Haringey.

The case had been settled in Mr Ayinde’s favour by the time it reached Ritchie J and he ordered the council to pay costs of £13,500, in part because he had debarred it from providing any submissions due to a wholesale breach of court orders, for which he refused relief from sanctions.

The council nonetheless sought a wasted costs order against the claimant’s lawyers because they put five fake cases in their statement of facts and grounds for the judicial review, and failed to produce copies of the cases when requested.

Further, the lawyers asserted throughout that section 188(3) of the Housing Act 1996 – about the council’s obligation to provide interim accommodation pending a review decision – was a ‘must’ provision when it was actually a discretionary ‘may’ provision.

Ms Forey told the court that she kept a box of copies of cases, along with a paper and electronic list of cases with their ratios, and said she dragged and dropped one of the fake cases from that list into the statement.

Ritchie J said: “I do not understand that explanation or how it hangs together. If she herself had put together, through research, a list of cases and they were photocopied in a box, this case could not have been one of them because it does not exist.

“Secondly, if she had written a table of cases and the ratio of each case, this could not have been in that table because it does not exist.

“Thirdly, if she had dropped it into an important court pleading, for which she bears professional responsibility because she puts her name on it, she should not have been making the submission to a High Court judge that this case actually ever existed, because it does not exist.

“I find as a fact that the case did not exist. I reject Miss Forey’s explanation.”

It was, the judge said, “such a professional shame”. She had a strong claim, so “why put a fake case in?”

Counsel for the council suggested Ms Forey had used artificial intelligence (AI) but Ritchie J said he could not make a finding on this because the barrister was not sworn in and cross examined.

If she had used AI and not checked it, it would have been negligent to put the text into her pleading, however.

Ms Forey was also “wholly silent” on the question of how she represented section 188(3).

The judge found it “wholly proper” for the council not only to raise the matter but to ask for an explanation and then to issue a wasted costs application.

“This sort of behaviour should not be left unexposed. It undermines the integrity of the legal profession and the Bar.”

The council’s conduct of the substantive claim did not outweigh the “appalling professional misbehaviour of the claimant’s solicitors and the barristers”, Ritchie J concluded.

They had misled the court and a wasted costs order was justified. He ordered Ms Forey and Haringey Law Centre to each pay £2,000, and then went on to reduce the costs he had ordered the council to pay to £6,500.

He cut Ms Forey’s fee for documentation and the hearing by £2,000 to £1,500 and disallowed £5,000 of the law centre’s fees to mark its “conduct and involvement” in the fake citations.

Finally, Ritchie J ordered a transcript of his judgment be produced at public expense and that the council send it to the Bar Standards Board and the Solicitors Regulation Authority. It was a matter for the lawyers whether they also self-reported, he said.

We have approached both Ms Forey and Haringey Law Centre for comment.