Cheque: Solicitor changed date because it had expired
A solicitor who changed the terms of a lasting power of attorney (LPA) and the date on a cheque without the client’s consent did not act dishonestly, the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal (SDT) has ruled.
Sarah Elizabeth Reynolds, who was fined £5,500, was seeking to clear outstanding work before leaving her firm and realised that she had failed to register Person A’s LPA for property and financial affairs with the Office of the Public Guardian (OPG) for almost a year.
She admitted changing the terms of the LPA to avoid it being rejected by the OPG and changing the date on the cheque, but denied sending the documents and cheque to the OPG or acting dishonestly.
Ms Reynolds, who qualified in 2007, said she had intended to seek the client’s consent to the changes but they were instead sent to the OPG by an administrative colleague without checking with her first.
The solicitor had resigned from South-East firm Parfitt Cresswell after a decade and was working out her three-month notice period in the firm’s Uckfield office, and at the time only had three days to complete her outstanding work at the firm.
The SDT heard that just before midnight on 24 February 2022, three days before she was due to leave, Ms Reynolds amended a section of the LPA relating to preferences, which had previously been signed by Person A and her three children, acting as attorneys.
She did this because she had become aware from other LPAs drafted by the firm that the wording used had been rejected by the OPG.
She also changed the date of the cheque from 2021 to 2022, as it had expired, and “genuinely believed that she would be able to visit Person A and have the changes made to the document authorised and the cheque date amendment initialled before she finally left the firm”.
The SDT accepted that Ms Reynolds “felt a strong sense of loyalty to clients and did all she could to resolve all the issues pertaining to her uncompleted files within her notice period, working very long hours at times and sometimes working during the early hours of the morning as a result of a very heavy workload”.
Medical evidence was consistent with her “seeking perfection and sometimes leading her to act impulsively”.
The tribunal also noted the difficulties Ms Reynolds experienced “balancing her family life, caring for two children who had diagnosed medical conditions and other caring responsibilities against a heavy professional workload”.
On the balance of probability, ordinary decent people “would not find the respondent’s admittedly improper and unwise action of pre-emptively changing the date on the cheque, with a view to subsequently seeking the client’s authorisation” to be dishonest.
Ms Reynolds was found to have acted with a lack of integrity in changing the terms of the LPA and the cheque, but not dishonestly.
“The tribunal found that the motivation for the conduct was a desire to progress work to completion before she left the firm. In seeking to change the LPA and the cheque, her motivation was to ensure that the LPA was not rejected by the OPG and that the cheque was not rejected by the bank.”
Ms Reynolds’ actions were “spontaneous and consistent with the medical evidence of her potential to act impulsively”.
Nobody was actually harmed by her misconduct, but there was a risk that Person A, who was elderly, could have been.
Given the solicitor’s mitigation and admissions, the SDT reduced her fine from £11,000 to £5,500.
Bearing in mind her lack of financial means, the costs awarded against her were also reduced, from £23,550 to £11,750.
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