Wandsworth County Court: Solicitor missed hearing
A self-employed advocate who lied in an attendance note about a court hearing in an attempt to cover up the fact he had missed it, has been struck off.
The Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal (SDT) said Alexander David Edmund Hayes Gallagher told LPC Law that he had “panicked” about missing the hearing and “did not give an account of what happened” in the attendance note but instead “dressed up his mistake”.
Mr Gallagher, who qualified in 2016, said in the attendance note, sent to LPC and his client, that at the hearing at Wandsworth County Court in August 2023 he had “requested an adjournment due to the lack of instructions”, while defence counsel said she had not received certain documents.
In fact, the solicitor had been late and missed the 2pm hearing. Defence counsel had left court by the time he arrived and had not reported any missing documents.
However, the order had not been drafted by then and, after hearing from Mr Gallagher, the district judge decided it was not in the interests of fairness or justice to make the order that he planned to and instead adjourned the matter.
The solicitor sent the attendance note the following day and LPC only found out it was inaccurate after its client received a copy of the court’s order, which detailed what had happened.
In a phone call with LPC Law, which it recorded with the solicitor’s knowledge, Mr Gallagher said he thought the hearing was listed for 3pm.
In a follow-up email, he said: “I accept the deception is the worst part of it and I merely explain how this rather strange situation came about. It was pretty artless of me, I do not know why I did it.”
The SDT said Mr Gallagher’s motivation for the misconduct was to cover up his mistake. His dishonesty had caused LPC Law “reputational damage with a longstanding client”.
The solicitor did not engage with the proceedings or attend the hearing and there was no mitigation. The tribunal said it did not accept a statement he made that he did not intend to deceive.
“Members of the public would not expect a solicitor to lie in an attendance note of a hearing in order to cover his own embarrassment.”
While the misconduct was “a single episode of brief duration in an otherwise unblemished career”, and he had “full and frank admissions” to both LPC and the Solicitors Regulation Authority, these did not amount to exceptional circumstances such as to displace the usual sanction in cases of dishonesty.
Mr Gallagher was struck off and ordered to pay costs of £9,400.
