Hurst: Successful appeal
The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) has been ordered to make an interim costs payment of £400,000 to the solicitor for former Conservative Chancellor Nadeem Zahawi.
Mrs Justice Collins Rice issued the order after overturning the finding of misconduct made against Ashley Hurst.
She held that the decision of the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal (SDT) was “insufficiently analysed and reasoned, vitiated by misdirection and error of law, and unfair”.
The tribunal had fined Mr Hurst, a partner at Osborne Clarke, £50,000 after finding he had shown a lack of integrity in sending an email to high-profile tax lawyer Dan Neidle that “improperly attempted” to restrict his right to publish it or publicly discuss its contents.
In a consent order issued last week, Collins Rice J also said the SRA had to return the £260,000 Mr Hurst paid the SRA in costs for the SDT hearing, plus interest at a rate of 6%.
Further, the SRA now has to pay Mr Hurst’s costs of both the tribunal and the appeal proceedings, both on the standard basis, and the interim payment of £400,000 in respect of both.
The fine was paid to HM Treasury and so will have to be recovered from there.
The order comes off the back of two hefty costs awards by the SDT against the SRA that we reported last month: £50,000 for various shortcomings in one prosecution, and nearly £160,000 after the other was ruled “fatally flawed”.
The regulator is also facing a huge costs bill for its failed prosecution of Carter-Ruck lawyer Claire Gill, although the SRA is challenging the SDT decision in the High Court.
Recent figures from the SRA showed that the six most expensive prosecutions taken in the year to 31 October 2024 cost it just shy of £1m but only led to costs awards of just over £300,000 – in three of the cases, it received nothing.
Costs do not follow the event in the SDT because of the potential chilling effect on the SRA as a prosecutor in the public interest. The usual position where an allegation is dismissed is no order as to costs but they can be awarded if there is “good reason” to depart from this.
