Fleming: Died at the end of 2023
The High Court has ordered the partner of a leading Birmingham solicitor, who died at the end of last year, to remove social media posts accusing his executors, one of whom is a director of his law firm, of misconduct.
His Honour Judge Tindal in Birmingham also extended an existing injunction imposed on Sophie Fleming, who had six children with the late Brendan Fleming, to the executors’ lawyers, who had been the target of similar accusations.
HHJ Tindal said Ms Fleming’s “frustrations and misunderstandings” appear to have prompted her “to ‘take up arms’ against the executors online, as a quintessential 21st century ‘keyboard warrior’”.
Not only did she make accusations of professional misconduct directly against Rebecca Ward, a director of Brendan Fleming Limited (BFL), and Richard Wood, a financial adviser, but she repeated these “unfounded” allegations to the Solicitors Regulation Authority and Financial Conduct Authority “with persistence and unpleasantness”.
The judge went on: “Ms Fleming’s destabilisation of BFL internally (by emails to staff) and externally (by posts critical of Ms Ward as BFL’s director linked to groups for parents facing care proceedings) was plainly ‘targeted at’ Ms Ward, quite possibly in the hope of ousting her from BFL, which appears to be one of Ms Fleming’s underlying objectives.
“But innocent victims were caught in Ms Fleming’s fire: BFL’s employees, themselves suffering bereavement from Mr Fleming’s death.
“Ms Fleming’s conduct, especially by her linking posts to social media groups discouraging parents who might instruct BFL, went far beyond personal criticism of Ms Ward and undermined the firm itself and the livelihoods of the people working for it who loyally worked for Mr Fleming for many years.
“The fact that Ms Fleming herself does not think that these attacks will affect her family is fundamentally misguided and even reckless with her own children’s inheritance.”
Alongside this claim by the executors for an injunction restraining Ms Fleming from harassing them online – granted in July – Ms Fleming is bringing separate probate proceedings.
HHJ Tindal described Brendan Fleming as “larger than life, perhaps one of the most recognisable and well-respected solicitors in Birmingham’s legal community for 40 years”.
When he died at the age of 75 on New Year’s Eve 2023, he left an estate worth around £8m, including BFL, recently valued by Mr Wood’s firm at £2.4m. It is a specialist family law firm.
The judge said: “It is no exaggeration to say that for Ms Fleming, her entire world has been turned upside down in the last year and she is very concerned for her children.
“It is often said a parent will do anything for her child, but that does not mean that everything a parent does for their child is the right thing to do.
“Sadly, in her desire to do the right thing for her children, I am not convinced that Ms Fleming’s approach to this litigation so far has been the right one, indeed not even for herself and her family.”
Ms Fleming “effectively accepted” she had no objective evidence for her allegations; they were simply what she genuinely believed about the executors’ conduct.
“However, it is clear those beliefs are based on cumulative misunderstandings, aggravated by anxiety over delay in distribution and so her own tight finances.”
The judge said that, as Mr Fleming built up his law firm, “he came to trust, in particular, his colleague and fellow solicitor, Ms Ward”.
He continued: “Indeed, it is actually not disputed by Ms Fleming that it was always Mr Fleming’s intention that Ms Ward, should she remain part of the firm, should step into his very big shoes after he retired.”
Ms Fleming alleges that Mr Wood and Ms Ward committed “criminal and professional misconduct” by relying on an allegedly invalid will from 2020, changing Mr Fleming’s domicile from Turkey to Northern Ireland and “misleading” another judge into making an order in January 2024 to “misappropriate” BFL.
Dismissing Ms Fleming’s application for summary judgment in the harassment proceedings, HHJ Tindal said the executors had a real prospect of establishing that her actions met the test in the Protection from Harassment Act 1997.
The “most serious” element of her conduct were the complaints to executors’ regulatory bodies, which targeted not just their reputation but also their professional right to practise and therefore their livelihoods.
The judge said the balance between the competing rights to a private life and to freedom of expression was “more likely than not” to fall in favour of a finding of harassment and a final injunction.
He narrowed the injunction to restrict the ban to comments made about the executors’ conduct but also ordered Ms Fleming to take down all social media posts alleging misconduct, including on her GoFundMe page.
He also extended it to cover the lawyers acting for Mr Wood and Ms Ward, “because they have the right to do their jobs without being bombarded with her vitriolic comments for which there is no justification”.
The judge dealt with various subsidiary applications on the probate application too, which included rejecting Ms Fleming’s application for summary judgment and to remove the executors, and found that England was the appropriate jurisdiction, rather than Turkey or Northern Ireland, where she now lives.
He also issued directions for a committal application made by executors for breach of the injunction.
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