The High Court has overturned a tribunal’s decision to name clients of a solicitor who went on to be struck off.
Mr Justice Julian Knowles accepted the submissions of the SRA which had argued that legal professional privilege would be breached by publishing a full version of the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal’s ruling.
In Solicitors Regulation Authority v Williams, the judge ruled that this breach of LPP was inconsistent with binding authority and was not justified by the principle of open justice.
The court heard that the dispute had arisen after the SDT had struck off Yorkshire solicitor Edward Williams last November (Williams did not take part in the subsequent proceedings). Allegations against him included causing the transfer of client money without consent, falsifying an email to justify this transfer and misappropriating £4,500 from a client.
The SRA had applied for an order anonymising six clients and four properties relating to the case. The tribunal refused this order, citing the judgment in Lu v SRA and finding no reason to depart from the principle of open justice. Publication of the tribunal’s judgment was postponed pending the SRA’s appeal to the court.
The regulator argued there was a strong public interest in protecting LPP and the ability of members of the public to communicate in confidence with their lawyers. This fundamental right could not be overridden and it covered communications in relation to the handling of a conveyancing transaction.
Rory Dunlop KC, representing the SRA, said that the SDT had failed to consider or recognise the wider harm to the public interest which occurs when the general principle, that a client may expect their communications to their lawyers to be kept confidential, is eroded without proper or lawful reason.
The decision in Lu, he submitted, was indeed related to anonymity but only applying to the respondent’s firm and former colleagues – not LPP.
The judge said at the end of the hearing in July that he would make the order sought by the SRA.
In his written judgment published this week, he accepted that Lu was not a case about LPP and said the SDT’s main error was in trying to balance competing interests against a client’s right to confidentiality.
‘LPP either applies to a communication, or it does not,’ said the judge. ‘Where it applies, then it is absolute unless it is waived by the client.
‘The communications at issue in the present case are and were obviously protected by LPP which had not been waived, and that should have been the end of the matter.
‘No further analysis was necessary, and the SDT should have reflected the communications’ privileged status by anonymising its reasons, as it was asked to do by the SRA.’
