SDT: Actions did not amount ot misconduct
A veteran solicitor who genuinely believed a court had entered judgment against his client by error has been cleared of multiple allegations, including dishonesty, made against him by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA).
The decision of the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal (SDT) indicates that April’s Court of Appeal ruling in the Dentons case is already having an impact, as it found Richard Alexander Dobson’s failures were not serious enough to amount to professional misconduct.
In Dentons, the Court of Appeal held [1] that a solicitor’s breach of their regulatory obligations only amounted to misconduct if it was “sufficiently serious”.
The SDT ruling acknowledged the threshold that this set.
Mr Dobson, who denied the allegations, was a solicitor and director of Trent Law and based in Derby. He qualified in 1977.
The tribunal heard that Client A sold a Derbyshire mobile home in 2019 that she had previously owned with her late husband for around £90,000, with net proceeds of just under £80,000.
A dispute arose over whether ownership of the mobile home had passed to Client A and all proceeds of the sale were hers, or whether her joint tenancy had been severed and 50% of the proceeds belonged to her husband’s estate.
The executor served proceedings on Client A in October 2020 and Mr Dobson was instructed to defend the claim.
He did not serve a directions questionnaire (DQ) or costs budget as required, even though non-compliance could result in a judgment in default.
Judgment in default was indeed entered against Client A in March 2021 for £49,400. Mr Dobson did not apply to set it aside, believing it had been issued in default of a defence, when he knew he had filed one.
When the court told him it was because of the failure to file the DQ, he still thought it was an error as he had not seen either the administrative reminder to file the DQ or the unless order attached to the directions. The SDT accepted this, finding fault in Trent Law’s filing system.
The SDT said Mr Dobson thought he would be able to get the judgment set aside without a formal application and without the client having to be involved.
Instead, enforcement officers “obtained access to Client A’s residence” in July 2021 and, although Mr Dobson advised her against it, she paid them the full enforcement amount of £60,300.
Client A complained to Mr Dobson in August 2021, and the following month he emailed Trent Law’s owner, Dr Aamir Nawaz, an internal report about the matter.
Mr Dobson’s fixed term of employment at Trent Law ended in July 2022. Dr Nawaz reported him to the SRA in September 2023.
The solicitor accepted that he could have been more proactive in response to the judgment after it was received but denied that he was in breach of any regulatory requirement as a result.
The SDT, which described Mr Dobson as a “thoughtful and reflective witness who took care with his answers”, decided that at no stage did he fail to act in the best interests of his client.
He had “good reason” to delay engaging with the solicitors for the claimant before proceedings were issued and for not replying to “every piece of persistent correspondence” until he was fully up to speed on the matter, which he had taken over from a colleague who was ill.
Mr Dobson “should have kept Client A’s case on the right path and kept better track of the deadlines” and should “undoubtedly have done more to ensure that the deadlines were met on behalf of Client A”.
However, the direction to file the DQ was a direction to Client A not to the firm. “As Client A’s solicitor, he was not himself personally in breach of the direction in the notice to file the DQ. The tribunal found that his failure to ensure that his client complied with the order, while regrettable, was not serious and culpable from a regulatory standpoint”.
The SDT accepted Mr Dobson’s evidence that he thought the judgment was entered due to a procedural error. “He did what he thought was needed to act in Client A’s interests even though he did not make an application to set aside the judgment as he could and arguably should have done.”
This belief was also why he did not tell Client A about the judgment or procedural error.
“Although it would have been much better practice to inform Client A as soon as he received the judgment, and indeed to explain what he was doing about it, the tribunal was persuaded in all the circumstances that Mr Dobson’s failure to do so did not meet the threshold of seriousness required for there to be a breach of [the code of conduct].”
The SDT also accepted the solicitor’s evidence that he did not know that his internal report was going to be used “almost verbatim” as the basis for Trent Law’s response to the client.
“Viewed in this context, the tribunal was satisfied that the report, although not as full as it could have been, was not written with the intent to conceal any facts of the case from Client A.”
But it rejected his application for costs of £15,000 because the case “was not improperly brought and had not been badly conducted” by the SRA.