Land Registry: Solicitor failed to register property
A veteran solicitor who repeatedly lied to a client, giving her false assurances over a period of two years about the registration of her property, has been struck off.
The Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal (SDT) said Simon Langton, who admitted dishonesty, also ignored 26 emails, 22 phone calls and two letters over an eight-month period from Premier Property Lawyers about a lease extension.
The SDT said the motivation of Mr Langton, who qualified in 1979, was “not easy to determine”.
However, “it was clear he had got himself into an organisational mess which he failed to deal with and had then tried to conceal his own failures from his client”.
While his misconduct had not caused “catastrophic financial loss, the harm was nonetheless serious”.
HIs clients had “trusted him implicitly and had been badly let down, and other firms had been put to considerable trouble in chasing him”.
There were “very few” mitigating factors: “The misconduct did not result from any deception or coercion by a third party. The respondent had not made good the position, despite ample opportunity to do so.”
Mr Langton had also not made “open and frank admissions at an early stage, nor had he co-operated with the investigation” by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA). “Such insight and remorse as he had shown had come late, and not during the investigation.”
The tribunal heard that Mr Langton was owner, manager and sole solicitor at Sayers Solicitors in North-West London.
Mr and Mrs A instructed him in the purchase of a property that completed in June 2019. An application by Sayers Solicitors to register the property was rejected two months later and no further application made.
Mrs A noticed the property was not appearing on sold-property price websites in mid-2020 and asked the solicitor about it.
Mr Langton “said he would make enquiries”, but did not respond to her further requests made in January and June 2021.
Between November 2021 and November 2023, “on up to seven occasions”, Mr Langton gave Mrs A “assurances about the status of the registration”.
These included statements that the application was “back in” with HM Land Registry (HMLR) and being processed and in November 2023, that it had been “lodged”.
HMLR confirmed in January 2024 that no application had been received and in March that year Mrs A referred Mr Langton to the SRA.
The solicitor acted for the sellers of a different property that completed in December 2022. The buyer’s law firm, Knight Richardson, needed information from Mr Langton to respond to a requisition from HMLR.
Between May and November 2023, Mr Langton failed to respond to five emails from Knight Richardson, which reported him to the SRA.
The solicitor acted for the sellers of a third property in 2023, where the buyers required a lease extension as part of the transaction.
Sayers Solicitors gave an undertaking to Premier, acting for the buyers, in November 2023 that it would register the lease extension within three days of completion.
The sale completed the following month and Mr Langton confirmed in writing that he would register the lease extension. However, he did not do it, despite Premier’s repeated contacts. It reported him to the SRA in October 2024.
The SRA contacted Mr Langton 11 times over Mrs A’s complaint without receiving a “substantive response”, 12 times over the Knight Richardson report and five times over the Premier report.
The solicitor admitted acting dishonestly by providing false or misleading information to Mrs A about the registration of her property.
He also admitted failure to assist with requisitions from HMLR, failure to perform or discharge an undertaking he gave to Premier and failure to co-operate with the SRA.
In mitigation, the SDT recorded: “Having practised for some 47 to 48 years, he said that he would have wished to leave the profession without this stain upon his character, but that he had got himself into difficulties from which, under the pressure he was experiencing, he had been unable to extricate himself.
“He told the tribunal that, at his age, an end to the constant stress of running a small high street practice would in truth be a blessing.”
Mr Langton was struck off and ordered to pay costs of £45,630.