Asylum claim: Decision letter triggered issues
An immigration solicitor has been cleared of misleading her employer over her conduct of an asylum case after a three-day Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal (SDT) hearing.
The case against Riffat Hussain, who worked at the University of Liverpool Law Clinic, revolved around a Home Office decision letter that was sent on 15 June 2023, rejecting an asylum application made by one of Ms Hussain’s clients.
The solicitor, 46 this year, qualified in 2013 and was accused of misleading the clinic about what she did and knew after the letter was received.
Later in June, she created two ‘tasks’ in its case management system (CMS). One was to ensure that the letter was sent to the client. The other was a blank template letter to the client.
She told the SDT that these were preparatory steps to arrange a meeting with the client, rather than send the refusal decision itself.
Ms Hussain did not do either and was away from the office in August during a period when she was experiencing “significant personal issues”.
On 18 September, she returned to the file after the client asked for an update. Having tried unsuccessfully to call them, the solicitor deleted the two tasks and created a new one for herself to make contact with the client.
The following day, she had an informal catch-up with colleague Judith Carter, whose evidence was that Ms Hussain denied knowing the decision letter had been received in June, giving the impression that there had been administrative failings within the clinic. Ms Hussain denied that she said this.
By now, it was too late for the client to appeal the Home Office decision, opening up the possibility of a negligence claim.
Ms Carter raised the issue with the centre’s co-directors the following day and the university began a formal investigation. Ms Hussain resigned the day before a disciplinary meeting was to take place.
Before the SDT, Ms Hussain said she deleted the two tasks from the CMS unintentionally but denied trying to mislead her colleagues.
The tribunal did not find that Ms Hussain deleted the two items to mislead her employer.
If that had been her intention, “she would have taken other steps more obviously directed to that objective but did not do so”, such as deleting the decision itself from the system.
The tribunal also identified “other reasons why the two items were no longer needed at the time they were deleted”.
While Ms Carter was “a straightforward witness who was doing her best to assist the tribunal”, it was not satisfied that her recollection and the note she made the day after the conversation “precisely reflected the actual words” Ms Hussain had used.
It found “evident limits” to the recollection of the witnesses of what took place: “Their accounts differed in certain respects as to who said what, and when, during that period.”
The SDT concluded that it was not satisfied, given the need for clear and cogent evidence, that Ms Hussain “used the exact words attributed to her by Ms Carter, upon which the allegation narrowly turns, or that she attempted to mislead her during the conversation”.
Also, given the finding that Ms Hussian had not sought to mislead by deleting the items from the CMS, it was “inherently unlikely that she would have sought to mislead Ms Carter for a similar purpose the following day”.
Ms Hussain sought her costs, but they do not follow the event in the SDT – the starting point where allegations are dismissed is no order for costs against the regulator; there has to be good reason to depart from that.
The tribunal said the case was “properly brought and had not been badly conducted by the [Solicitors Regulation Authority] to such an extent as to displace the default position on costs.
“It noted that the issues in the case were not sufficiently straightforward to be dealt with on the papers. The hearing had occupied the tribunal for the best part of three days and required a careful assessment of oral evidence.
“The tribunal did not consider that there was good reason to depart from the established position.”
It dismissed the allegations and made no order for costs.