SDT: Imbalance of power
A partner and registered foreign lawyer at the Brussels office of a major City law firm has been banned from the profession for five years after admitting that he wanted a sexual relationship with a young female colleague he managed.
The Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal (SDT) heard that Takeshige Sugimoto bombarded the junior consultant with 989 WhatsApp messages over two months, using some of them to declare his “intense feelings” for her.
Approving an agreed outcome between Mr Sugimoto and the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA), the SDT said the Bird & Bird partner “was in a position of authority and influence and used the imbalance of power created by his seniority to take advantage of a junior female consultant”.
Mr Sugimoto, 43 this year, was registered as a foreign lawyer just before he became a partner in the Brussels office of Bird & Bird in June 2018. He was expelled by the firm in July 2019 over these events and now works in Japan for a non-SRA firm.
The SRA described Person B as “junior and inexperienced”. She reported directly to Mr Sugimoto, in a team where there was no other partner.
“She had recently moved to Brussels and had no family or friends nearby. The respondent knew or ought to have known that he held a particular position of authority in respect of Person B and as such that he was required to behave professionally and maintain appropriate boundaries.”
Instead, Mr Sugimoto used his position to pursue a course of conduct that was “highly inappropriate”.
On Person B’s first day of work in January 2019, Mr Sugimoto invited her to dinner, where he asked her if she had a boyfriend and “told her she was different from the other girls in the team and that he liked her a lot”.
A few days later, he sent a WhatsAppp message in which he said “I literally fall in love with you”, followed by another in which he said he was thinking about her “all the time”.
The following day, he wrote: “I can tell you that spending time with you is the happiest moment for me in my 37 years of my life.”
A few days later, one message said: “My meeting with you is far much extremely stronger pleasure for me than having sex with anyone. Thank you for giving me such unbelievable pleasure experiences to me in my life.”
Person B said she did not complain about his behaviour at the time because she was dealing with “extreme anxiety, feelings of disgust and blame towards myself”.
The SRA said: “She worried that maybe she had been too polite or too friendly. Furthermore, he was a partner in the firm and her line manager. She had only just moved to the country to take up the position at the firm. In the circumstances she felt there was little she could have done.”
In all, Mr Sugimoto sent 989 WhatsApp messages to Person B, of which 751 were sent out of hours. She left the firm in July 2019.
The SRA said the partner’s behaviour persisted for two months, “inundating Person B with requests to see him” and waiting outside the office and her home to see her.
He made “intense and persistent declarations of his feelings towards Person B” and this behaviour extended to touching, including “taking her hands and trying to hug her”.
“As can be seen from the WhatsApp messages, she attempted to be polite and replied to many of the respondent’s messages.
“However, she did not return his feelings and did not initiate any messages which suggested that she wanted a relationship with him. Given Person B’s position, it is understandable why she did not feel able to rebut or complain about the Respondent’s advances.”
Mr Sugimoto admitted breaching the Overseas Rules 2013 by acting with a lack of integrity and bringing the profession into disrepute. He also admitted that his misconduct was “predominantly sexually motivated” and “carried out in pursuit of a future sexual relationship”.
In mitigation, he submitted that it was “a time of personal crisis, following on from the death of his father in January 2019 and separation from his family, so that he was alone in Brussels, suffering from significant depression”.
Mr Sugimoto accepted that he became “fixated on Person B for a short period” and had abused his position.
He described Person B as “extremely sympathetic” to him at a time of emotional turmoil, “which affected his judgment and led him to cross the professional boundary in error”.
He said that, when he understood that there was no chance of a romantic relationship, “his actions towards her ceased, and he took no retaliation”.
The tribunal imposed an order under section 43 of the Solicitors Act 1974 – which is how it can control the employment of non-solicitors – that bans him from working in the profession for five years.
He was also ordered to pay £36,000 in costs.
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