Leeds: Tribunal misled
An in-house lawyer who lied to Leeds Employment Tribunal (LET) and fabricated a notice of a hearing at another tribunal to secure an adjournment has been struck off.
The solicitor, referred to only as ‘AO’, was “caught in a lie” when requesting LET to adjourn the hearing.
The Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal (SDT) granted AO’s application to be anonymised after evidence from a psychiatrist said there was a risk of “serious harm” to her if she was named.
In events dating back more than a decade, AO had been acting in proceedings at LET on behalf of her employer, defending a claim brought by a former employee, represented by Person A, a litigation friend.
LET listed a preliminary hearing for 9 June 2015. AO sought an adjournment on the grounds that she was required to attend another employment tribunal hearing. LET agreed but requested confirmation of her attendance at the other hearing.
AO emailed the tribunal and Person A with a redacted version of a notice from Bristol Employment Tribunal (BET) which appeared to confirm that a hearing had been listed in Southampton on the same day in an unrelated case.
Person A “raised his concerns” with LET about the notice, and the individual at BET who had supposedly signed it confirmed that she had not signed or issued the notice.
AO denied the allegations, saying there had been a hearing listed in Southampton for 9 June.
The SDT said there was some backing for this – including known problems with the employment tribunal listing systema t the time – but the evidence going the other way was stronger and met the standard of proof.
It found AO “had a motive to fabricate the document – she faced an unless order and an unusually aggressive opponent in Person A”.
The notice from BET “contained errors that, in the tribunal’s view, could not be explained other than on the basis that the document was fabricated”.
In particular, “the misspelling of the word ‘management’ in a heading that formed part of a standard template was extraordinary”.
Similarly, the “erroneous reference to ‘Tribunals’ was an error that would not appear in a standardised court document”.
The BET employee “confirmed that the signature on the document was not her own” and that no one else at the tribunal “would send correspondence in her name”.
The SDT said that if the notice had been genuine, AO “would have submitted it in unredacted form” ahead of an LET hearing to investigate the situation.
This was “especially so given the respondent’s honesty and integrity had been openly challenged” during cross-examination.
“It is inconceivable in those circumstances that any solicitor would have failed to provide the document in full, unredacted form to reassure the court and ensure their honesty and integrity was not in question.”
The SDT found that AO had acted dishonestly in lying to LET and fabricating the notice.
In mitigation, her counsel argued that a “fair and proportionate sanction” would be a two-year suspension, allowing her to “develop the insight which she does not yet have – given her continuing denial of the conduct in question”.
However, the tribunal said AO’s misconduct was aggravated by her “concealment of wrongdoing” and “her attempt to place the blame for the misconduct on others (including upon [her employer] and HMCTS employees for purported inadvertent administrative errors)”.
She had been “caught in a lie and this motivated her to send the false email and notice to the court”. The SDT ordered that AO be struck off.
The SRA’s claim for costs of almost £48,000 was reduced to £19,400, mainly on the grounds of the solicitor’s financial circumstances.