Police: Informed the SRA
A criminal defence lawyer who was filmed by police advising the complainant in a domestic abuse case while acting for the person accused of headbutting her has been suspended from practice.
The Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal (SDT) heard that an officer’s body-worn camera recorded Landreth Adonis Daniel’s phone call with the complainant when police were at her home to serve a witness summons.
Mr Daniel, admitted in 1991, was a solicitor consultant with Andrew Storch Solicitors, based in Reading. Persons A and B were in a relationship and “professionally known” to the solicitor.
Person B was charged with assault occasioning actual bodily harm against Person A in December 2021 – an allegation involving headbutting and causing bleeding – and with criminal damage.
Later that month, Mr Daniel appeared on behalf of Person B but “continued to have contact with” Person A, representing her as a solicitor “in other criminal matters”.
He maintained before the tribunal that his representation of Person A related to entirely separate matters and that there was no conflict or significant risk of one.
The SDT disagreed, noting that Person B’s defence was based on self-defence. In acting for Person A in a range of previous and ongoing matters – including allegations of common assault by beating, and being drunk and disorderly – Mr Daniel had been privy to personal information about her “that was plainly relevant to the defence of Person B”.
It explained: “This included not only the likelihood of Person A attending court, given her personal and domestic circumstances, but also information bearing on her credibility and any propensity to act in a violent or disorderly manner.
“Regardless of the merits of any potential bad character application, [Mr Daniel] was in a position of actual conflict, which materially impaired his ability to make appropriate decisions in the case.
He was also aware that Person A was engaged in separate Family Court proceedings, and that the outcome of the criminal charges against Person B “was clearly of significance to her”.
On 3 February 2022, a witness summons was issued in an effort to secure Person A’s attendance at the trial the following day.
During the visit, she spoke to Mr Daniel on the telephone and before the SDT he “rejected any suggestion” that the advice he gave her was intended to benefit Person B or undermine the prosecution.
Rejecting his evidence, the SDT said it “placed weight” on the fact that Mr Daniel “approached the conversation from the outset on the basis of how Person A might avoid accepting the witness summons” – rather than on the basis of Person A’s interests in giving evidence and how these could have been supported, for example through the use of special measures.
Mr Daniel “appeared irritated that Person A had answered the door to the police officers, thereby allowing the summons to be served and triggering the subsequent telephone call”.
The evidence showed that he “fully recognised” the importance of Person A to the prosecution and the tribunal said he had “placed himself in a professionally compromised position of his own making”.
To act in Person B’s best interests and seek an acquittal, he needed to be “unfettered in his cross-examination of Person A”, it said. He was not in a “professionally sustainable position” and the only “permissible course of action” was to refuse to act.
The tribunal said the trial of Person B on 4 February was “aborted” and the solicitor withdrew from the case.
As a result of concerns raised by Person A at court, Crown Prosecution Service lawyers informed the district judge and there was a police investigation, resulting in a report to the Solicitors Regulation Authority.
Person B was convicted of ABH in May 2022. By then he was represented by another solicitor.
The tribunal found that Mr Daniel acted with a lack of integrity, failed to uphold public trust and failed to act in the best interests of each client.
Counsel for Mr Daniel said, in mitigation, that his misconduct “arose not from bad faith or a desire to secure an advantage for one client at the expense of another, but from a mistaken attempt to assist two clients with whom he had pre-existing professional relationships.”
There had been “a failure of professional judgement”, she said.
The SDT said the criminal proceedings “and Person A’s interactions with the respondent in particular, caused her distress and had an adverse impact on her health”.
It noted too that Mr Daniel had previously been the subject of “adverse findings” by the tribunal in 2002 and 2009 in unrelated matters.
His insight “remained limited”, persisting in his oral evidence in asserting that Person A was not owed a professional duty and adopting “a narrowly technical view of his obligations”.
A two-month suspension was “sufficient to mark the seriousness of the misconduct and to protect the public and the reputation of the profession”, the SDT concluded, ordering him also to pay costs of almost £19,300.
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