By John Hyde2021-02-02T12:10:00+00:00
A solicitor found to have lied to her client, her regulator and her insurer over several years has been struck off the roll. The Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal heard that Rizwana Jamil, who practised from Bradford firm RJ Solicitors, told her client that an immigration application on her behalf was progressing with the Home Office when the application had not even been submitted.
Jamil accepted she had taken instructions on the matter but then asserted she ‘passed the file’ to a paralegal in the firm, claiming that she believed the case was progressing and reassured the client on this basis.
Eduardo Reyes reports
News headlines on 6 May 2020 reflected a series of grim milestones arising from the pandemic. Global confirmed cases hit 3.65m, while youth unemployment was predicted to climb to a million in the UK.
England may have been six weeks into its first lockdown, but letters were about to start flying between the Junior Lawyers Division and the Solicitors Regulation Authority on a very different topic. When JLD chair Charlotte Parkinson attached the committee’s letter and hit ‘send’, it was to inform the regulator that junior lawyers had reached ‘the point where we do not have confidence in its approach to regulatory matters’.
By John Hyde2021-01-28T10:56:00+00:00
A solicitor who failed to disclose counsel’s pessimistic advice about a case to ATE insurers has agreed to an £8,000 fine. Nigel Martin Kinder, admitted in 1983, accepted that he failed to disclose all material facts when completing an insurance proposal form in 2008. The Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal certified an outcome agreed with the Solicitgors Regulation Authority.
It was accepted that the incident was a single incident in a previously unblemished career, with no evidence of repetition, bad faith or dishonesty, and no suggestion Kinder had concealed anything from his client.
The tribunal heard that Kinder, formerly with a Devon firm, was representing a claimant in arbitration and had taken out a policy on her behalf with ATE provider Elite Insurance Company Ltd. The insurer subsequently voided the policy on the basis of misrepresentation and non-disclosure of information – specifically the fact that two counsel had assessed th
“Inept” solicitor transferred money in breach of court order
27 January 2021
SDT: Incompetence did not mean the solicitor lacked integrity
A “seriously inept” solicitor who transferred money to another law firm’s client account, in breach of a court order that his firm should hold it, has been fined £8,000.
The Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal (SDT) found that Naim Ibrar Lone also allowed a solicitor, ‘Person B’, who had been suspended and was later struck off, to continue working on a file he had transferred to Mr Lone ahead of his firm (Firm B) being shut down by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA).
Supreme Court to consider costs orders against regulators
27 January 2021
Supreme Court: Permission granted
The Supreme Court is to consider whether costs should only be awarded against regulators in unsuccessful cases where there is good reason to make an order, it announced today.
The issue arose in a case involving the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) but the Court of Appeal referenced by analogy the position with solicitors in ruling last year that the starting point should be no order for costs where the unsuccessful regulator was acting purely in its regulatory capacity.
There could be good reason to depart from this, the appeal court said, but the mere fact that the regulator has been unsuccessful was not enough.