Debt: Barrister still owes £51,000 in interest and costs
The High Court has upheld a six-month suspension imposed on a barrister who failed to comply with a court order to pay £54,600 to a former salaried partner in his law firm.
Mrs Justice Lang held that the decision of the Bar disciplinary tribunal was “neither wrong nor clearly inappropriate”.
It found last spring that Zaheer Ahmad’s stance had been “that of an aggrieved judgment debtor”.
The former partner, ‘Mr H’, had brought the county court action over sums due under his partnership agreement at Regents & Co Solicitors.
In 2015, Mr Ahmad and Regents were ordered to pay £54,600 plus £9,400 in costs, but it was only in May 2023 – nearly a year after Mr Ahmad had exhausted all avenues of appeal – that he began to do so. By the time of the tribunal hearing, he had paid £42,500.
Lang J said that, at the date of the appeal hearing, Mr Ahmad’s evidence was that he had now paid Mr H £57,500, and so only interest and costs were outstanding. But she said this amounted to around £51,000.
Arguing that the tribunal’s decision was harsh among multiple grounds of appeal, Mr Ahmad said that, since the order for his suspension had become known, some clients have decided not to instruct him, “because of the risk that his appeal against suspension will not succeed and he will no longer be able to represent them”. This had reduced his income.
Rejecting his submission that the tribunal ought to have assessed the seriousness of his misconduct at the lowest level and imposed a fine, Lang J found no errors in how it had applied the Bar Standards Board’s sanctions guidance.
Its conclusions were “well within the reasonable range of evaluative judgments open to a specialist tribunal”.
Mr Ahmad was wrong to say the tribunal did not take into account the payments he made to discharge the debt. “It was entitled to conclude that, although the appellant took voluntary steps to remedy the breach, they were very late in the day and possibly prompted by the threat of bankruptcy proceedings.”
Similarly, it had shown “proper regard” of the impact the suspension would have on both his family and the payments to Mr H.
“In my view, the tribunal must have been well aware that the suspension would be likely to operate harshly as it would deprive the appellant of his livelihood and his income for six months.
“Clearly this would have an adverse effect on his family and he would not be able to continue representing clients during that period. However, the tribunal was entitled to take the view that suspension was required to maintain public confidence and trust in the profession, and to maintain high standards in the profession.”
Lang J cited Sir Thomas Bingham MR, from the landmark 1994 case of Bolton v Law Society, in which he held that the adverse consequences of a suspension did not make a suspension order wrong, if it was otherwise right.
She dismissed the appeal.
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