Tribunal: Bill was not grossly inflated
A solicitor who created a “false and misleading” attendance note to show that she warned a client about the escalating level of costs has been suspended for two years – avoiding the usual sanction of a strike-off for dishonesty.
Undiga Emuekpere told the the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal (SDT) that the typed note “was created contemporaneously from a handwritten note that had been damaged by rain” in June 2017.
The tribunal said it had, in fact, “most probably” been created more than two years later in response to a request from the Legal Ombudsman (LeO) for documents.
Although Ms Emuekpere, a consultant solicitor at central London firm Riverbrooke Solicitors, was found to have acted dishonestly, the SDT said the case “fell within the small residual category” where a strike-off would be disproportionate.
“The combination of her inexperience at the time – this being the first litigated case she had undertaken within a firm, having come into legal practice via an academic route – the isolated nature of the dishonesty, the absence of financial motivation, the lack of direct client loss and her previously unblemished record amounted, when taken together, to exceptional circumstances.”
The SDT found that Riverbrooke’s owner, Chinwe Uzo Chikwendu, had failed to co-operate with the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA), for which she was reprimanded.
However, the tribunal rejected an allegation that both solicitors acted dishonestly in preparing or causing to be prepared a “grossly inflated bill of costs” for ‘Client A’.
The tribunal heard that Ms Chikwendu, admitted in 2006, had run Riverbrooke since 2011. Ms Emuekpere, who qualified in 2009, was engaged as a self-employed consultant from June 2017 to September 2020.
Client A instructed Riverbrooke Solicitors in an employment tribunal claim against her former employer, signing a client-care letter in May 2017 which estimated costs at £6,000 if the claim settled and £10,000 if contested.
The following month, Ms Emuekpere visited Client A at home. Her contested attendance note recorded that the purpose was to review the trial bundle and that Client A was informed costs had exceeded £30,000.
Client A’s claims succeeded and, at a remedy hearing in July 2018, they rejected a settlement offer of £360,000 and alleged that she was told by Riverbrooke that her costs had reached £85,000. The client complained that her costs had “far exceeded” the original estimate and terminated the retainer.
Riverbrooke responded by issuing a detailed bill claiming over £85,500 plus VAT and disbursements, totalling over £122,000.
Client A complained to LeO, which confirmed an agreed outcome in February 2020 under which the law firm would issue a final bill of £10,000 plus VAT. LeO then referred the case to the SRA.
A review of the file by the costs expert instructed by the SRA came out £36,000 lower than the £85,500 bill. However, the SDT found his efforts had been constrained by incomplete contemporaneous records and overall found his evidence to be of “significant but not conclusive weight”.
The SDT could not be satisfied, on the balance of probabilities, that the bill was grossly inflated. The estimate and the lack of written updates “did not, without more, establish gross inflation”.
On the attendance note, Ms Emuekpere argued that “this typed note was created contemporaneously from a handwritten note that had been damaged by rain”.
However, the tribunal found that the typed note “introduced a material addition” – a reference to her telling the client that “we were definitely in above £30,000 in terms of our costs” – that did not appear in any contemporaneous handwritten record. It was also inconsistent with subsequent correspondence.
It concluded that the note “had been created at a later date for the purpose of establishing that such a discussion had taken place when it had not”.
Ms Chikwendu failed to comply with an information requests made by Capsticks, the SRA’s solicitors, in August 2023, which led to a statutory production notice. She missed the deadline for responding to it by more than three months.
The SDT described this as “prolonged and significant”, and amounted to a failure to co-operate with the regulator.
The SRA applied for costs of nearly £138,000, but the SRA reduced this, partly on account of means, to £15,000 by each solicitor.