Deadline: Solicitor failed to comply with directions
A solicitor who fabricated and backdated a disclosure letter to make it appear that he had complied with a court deadline has been struck off.
The Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal (SDT) said Joseph Elliott Dawson, a senior personal injury associate at national firm Leigh Day, was subject to a performance improvement plan and a final written warning and was likely to lose his job if his failure to carry out disclosure came to light.
The SDT found that Mr Dawson, who denied the allegations, created a letter with a false date stating that documents for inspection were enclosed, and sent it almost a month after that date, together with an email claiming it had already been sent.
Mr Dawson told Leigh Day that disclosure had taken place at around the date of the backdated letter in compliance with a court order.
The SDT said that, while his actions were “spontaneous in the first instance”, the solicitor “sustained them by continuing to insist that he had validly conducted disclosure on or around 26 May 2023 and in so doing misled his supervisor and subsequently the regulator”.
While in the event there was minimal impact, other than delay, on the parties to the underlying personal injury litigation, that was not inevitable.
“Mr Dawson’s conduct represented a significant departure from the standards of integrity, probity and trustworthiness demanded by the reputation of the legal profession as it was never acceptable for a solicitor to fabricate correspondence and label it as a ‘copy’.”
The SDT heard that Mr Dawson, admitted in 2010, joined Leigh Day in 2016. ‘Client A’ instructed the firm following an accident on a cruise ship in 2018, and Mr Dawson had conduct of the matter. Quantum remained in dispute.
Mr Dawson had been subject to the performance improvement plan (PIP) in November 2022 and was issued with a final written warning in February 2023. “As a result, Mr Dawson was on notice that further perceived failings in his performance would result in his dismissal,” the SDT heard.
The court issued directions in April 2023, requiring lists of documents to be disclosed by 28 April and inspection to be requested by 5 May. The parties were to provide the requested documents within 14 days.
Mr Dawson sent the document list for Client A to the defendant insurer’s law firm, Kennedys, on 15 May. Kennedys responded on the same day, requesting disclosure of several documents.
Kennedys chased the disclosure on 20 June. Mr Dawson was on annual leave that day and his line manager reviewed the matter. She found a letter dated 26 May, which was marked as ‘sent by email’ but “otherwise incomplete”.
He subsequently told her that the original was sent by post but somehow the letter had disappeared from the system and he had begun to reconstruct it. Leigh Day had no record of the letter being sent or emailed on that date.
Mr Dawson returned the following day and asked a paralegal to send Kennedys an electronic link providing access to documents, including the 26 May letter, though Mr Dawson explained that it was originally sent by first-class post.
The tribunal said Kennedys had not received the 26 May letter. Leigh Day launched an investigation which found no evidence from his timesheets that he was working on the matter at that time, while the metadata showed that the 26 May letter had been modified on 20 June.
Leigh Day held a disciplinary hearing and an appeal was unsuccessful. Mr Dawson’s employment with the firm ended the following day.
The solicitor argued that he had “saved the letter correctly” in the system at the end of May, but “an IT system error must have caused the content to be lost”.
But the SDT did not find Mr Dawson to be “a credible witness”, saying there was “no evidence that the inspection documents had been collated in readiness for dispatch on or around 26 May”.
He was “repeatedly unable to provide sufficient actual or inferential evidence” to support his version of events.
Mr Dawson was found to have acted dishonestly in creating the letter and in misleading his employer.
The solicitor was struck off and ordered to pay costs of £36,200.
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