SDT: Failure was discovered while solicitor was off work
A local authority solicitor who provided “false and misleading information” to colleagues over a period of 18 months about an application to discharge a child’s care order has been struck off.
Kathryn Hazlehurst also admitted acting dishonestly by inputting false details, including that the application had been issued when it had not, into the case list spreadsheet used by the legal team at Oldham Metropolitan Borough Council.
She qualified in 2007 and from March 2013 was a solicitor in the family team at the council.
Approving an agreed outcome between Ms Hazlehurst and the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA), the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal (SDT) heard that Child A was made the subject of an interim care order in February 2019.
Ms Hazlehurst was given the task of issuing an application to discharge the order in June or July 2020. Despite saying she had done this and that a court hearing had been listed for February 2021, in fact she never made the application, misleading her colleagues and the internal client department, which also led the parents of the child to believe that proceedings had been issued.
She kept on reporting that the hearing had been adjourned and inputted “false and misleading details” about the application into a case list spreadsheet in February 2022.
Among the details was that the application had been issued in September 2021 and there would be a court hearing in March 2022.
It was only when Ms Hazlehurst was on sick leave in March, and another lawyer in the team contacted the court, that her failure to act was discovered. She admitted what she had done, and the order was discharged in May 2022 after the council made an urgent application.
Ms Hazlehurst had handed in her notice earlier in the year anyway to start a new job with Manchester City Council.
However, during her notice period, Oldham launched disciplinary proceedings and she did not start the new job. The council concluded, in August 2022 that, had she remained employed by them, she would have been dismissed. The council reported the solicitor to the SRA in April 2022.
Ms Hazlehurst told the SRA how she was “extremely devastated and distraught that her career had taken this turn”, that lockdown and working on safeguarding cases “resulted in her breakdown” and she misled her department “out of panic”.
In non-agreed mitigation, she said she suffered from chronic health conditions which had an impact on her ability to work full-time.
She said she had hoped to rectify the issues with the case but she did not have the capacity to do so due to her poor physical health. She said she had also had an “emotional breakdown” whilst working at the council whilst handling a complex and difficult case.
Ms Hazlehurst noted too that the council had reviewed her other cases and found no other problems.
The SRA said the solicitor was “very culpable for her actions despite her poor health”. Her dishonesty was “elaborate”.
There would have been “obvious distress and inconvenience” caused to the child’s mother by the delay in discharging the care order.
Ms Hazlehurst was struck off and ordered to pay costs of £2,780.
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