SDT: Solicitor failed to correct position
A solicitor has failed in his appeal against a rebuke imposed by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) for failing to comply with court costs orders.
The Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal (SDT) described Sadaf Ijaz’s failure to comply with the first court order as “deliberate”.
An SRA adjudicator had found that Ms Ijaz failed to comply with a costs order in July 2019 and another in March 2022.
The solicitor, director of Safaz Legal in Birmingham, applied to review the decision but an adjudication panel upheld it. She appealed again to the SDT.
Her advocate, Rory Dunlop KC, explained that Ms Ijaz had been “in frequent litigation” with her office’s landlords.
His Honour Judge Barker QC dismissed her claim against them in July 2019 and ordered her to pay the landlord’s costs of the hearing, £5,250, by 12 August 2019, as well as the landlords’ other costs. She paid some of the hearing costs in September 2019.
Ms Ijaz applied for permission to appeal and ticked the box applying for a stay.
In November 2019, judgment was given for the landlords on their counterclaim, for which Ms Ijaz paid the damages and costs.
In September 2020, her appeal was struck out, although it was submitted on Ms Ijaz’s behalf that she “did not become aware of this fact for a long time”.
In February 2022, a district judge ordered the solicitor to pay a further £9,200 in costs.
She paid the balance of the first costs order in August 2022 and the second one in June 2023.
In deciding to issue a rebuke, the adjudicator found that, while Ms Ijaz may have intended to seek a stay, she failed to do so. The panel agreed with this.
Mr Dunlop sought to adduce new evidence showing that she had sought a stay and thus that the SRA decisions involved a mistake of fact.
However, the SDT said that it “must have been clear to Ms Ijaz once she received the adjudicator’s decision, that the adjudicator considered that no stay had been applied for”.
The solicitor failed to correct the position in her applications to both the adjudication panel and the SDT. This was due to Ms Ijaz’s “lack of reasonable diligence”, which she had not adequately explained.
There was “nothing exceptional in the circumstances of this case” for the SDT to exercise its discretion to admit the evidence.
Even if there had been a mistake of fact, the SDT went on, it would not have revoked the findings
“In particular, the adjudication panel had found that the non-compliance with the 2019 costs order had been deliberate.
“Given the reasoning of the adjudication panel, the tribunal was satisfied that any error of fact as regards the stay application was not material to the adjudication panel’s decision such that it would have altered that decision.”
The SDT also ordered her to pay costs of almost £10,800.
Five days before the tribunal hearing was due to take place in September, Ms Ijaz submitted a 113-page application for it to be held in private and anonymised.
Mr Dunlop argued that it was “contrary to the interests of justice to allow a decision that Parliament had intended be private to be discussed in the public domain”.
He said Ms Ijaz was “particularly concerned about publication of her residential address or any other matter that might exacerbate the risk of harassment”.
The SDT said that, had Parliament intended for all appeals against a decision taken under section 44D of the Solicitors Act 1974 be held in private, it would have stated so expressly.
The tribunal was not satisfied that “the matters relied upon by Ms Ijaz demonstrated that a public hearing would cause her exceptional hardship and/or exceptional prejudice” and rejected her application.
The tribunal also dismissed an application by the SRA to pursue an application to strike out the appeal.
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