Court of Appeal: Lodhia seeks permission to appeal
A legal consultant to a barristers’ chambers referred by a High Court judge to the Attorney General for possible contempt of court proceedings has filed an appeal at the Court of Appeal.
Amar Lodhia said he disputed the decision of Mr Justice Linden and criticised the process to reach it, given the judge was primarily conducting a summary costs hearing.
Meanwhile, Joseph Chiffers, the head of JSC Chambers – both of whom were referred to the Bar Standards Board (BSB) for their role – said he too was considering an appeal.
The JSC Chambers website calls Mr Lodhia a “supervised legal consultant within the chambers working directly” with Mr Chiffers.
We reported last month that Mr Lodhia was also chair and “appointed legal representative” of a residents’ association in East London challenging the reasonableness of service charges at the estate.
The underlying proceedings were a claim for defamation and malicious falsehood made in May 2025 against various defendants involving in managing the estate for comments in a newsletter that criticised Mr Lodhia’s litigation and other activities.
There were multiple applications and postponed hearings – including one in April because Mr Lodhia said it clashed with his University of Law oral assessments, which it later emerged there was not – before he issued a notice of discontinuance.
In a ruling on costs and other consequential issues, Linden J referred Mr Lodhia to the Attorney General on five grounds, including that in one postponement application, “Mr Lodhia relied on fabricated or doctored documents and submitted witness statements containing false evidence to support his application”.
Saying he was seeking permission to appeal, Mr Lodhia argued that Linden J made findings of the “utmost gravity” in a summary costs process.
A statement said: “No witness was cross-examined by any party, no oral evidence was taken, and the only person questioned in a witness-like manner was Mr Lodhia himself, an unrepresented, disabled party, questioned from the bench”.
Among his other objections were that his unchallenged medical evidence of “a disability which impairs information-processing under pressure” was discounted in preference to “the court’s own assessment of Mr Lodhia’s fluency under its own questioning”.
He said the University of Law’s independent disciplinary process examined the same documents and, on 16 June, “found insufficient evidence of intent to deceive”.
Mr Lodhia said: “I dispute these findings entirely and I will be asking the Court of Appeal to quash them. My appeal is about process: findings of the gravest kind were made without a trial, without cross-examination and without the safeguards the law guarantees to anyone facing an allegation of contempt.
“I was the only person questioned — by the judge — while the unchallenged evidence of my treating NHS clinician about my disability was put to one side. I have confidence in the appellate process.”
Though ostensibly Mr Lodhia was a litigant in person, Linden J was concerned about the extent to which JSC Chambers was involved in the case and Mr Chiffers’ supervision of Mr Lodhia.
The judge decided to refer Mr Chiffers and JSC Chambers to the BSB, saying: “It will be a matter for the BSB to consider how widely they wish to investigate practices at JSC Chambers but, at the very least, they should investigate what happened in this case in terms of Mr Chiffers’ knowledge of Mr Lodhia’s activities and whether there was a failure of supervision or any other regulatory breach.”
In a statement, Mr Chiffers said: “The only matter before the court was a claim involving one of our consultants conducting their own case, which was not comparable to a case involving one of JSC’s regular clients.
“It is unarguably correct that a party to proceedings is an ‘exempt person’ under schedule 3 paragraph 4(2) of the Legal Services Act 2007 and thus does not need to be supervised.
“Consequently, I am of the view that the judgment is based on a false premise, and I am considering whether to ask the Court of Appeal for permission to appeal the judgment.
“JSC staff are properly supervised and there is no basis for suggesting otherwise, based on this unusual case. I am nonetheless happy to discuss our procedures with the BSB.”
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