Letter: SDT rejected solicitor’s defence
A solicitor who dishonestly created and backdated a letter to the landlord of a vulnerable client has been handed a 12-month suspension, suspended for 24 months.
The Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal (SDT) described the misconduct by Niranjana Patel, who denied the allegation, as “a response to the pressure” of enquiries from the head of risk and compliance at the Jackson Lees Group.
The tribunal said Ms Patel’s conduct was “motivated by a desire to avoid further criticism from a colleague repeatedly demanding to be furnished with an immediate update as to what work had been done” on behalf of a disabled client.
But it found the misconduct a “momentary lapse” that justified departing from the usual sanction of a strike-off in cases of dishonesty.
Ms Patel, who qualified in 2004, received an email on 27 January 2021 from the head of risk, outlining concerns that she had not progressed K’s ongoing housing disrepair claim against his landlord.
Two days later, a letter was created on the firm’s system and sent to the landlord, dated 11 January.
Ms Patel then emailed the head of risk to say she had written to the landlord on 12 January, adding: “I honestly hadn’t realised that I had until I saw my time recording.”
The head of risk said he could not find the letter on the file and she sent it to him a few days later, confirming it had been sent on 12 January.
The firm later investigated and Ms Patel admitted that she had been mistaken about the date on which the letter had been sent. She was later dismissed for gross misconduct.
Denying the allegations, she told the SDT that she had dictated the letter on 12 January but it had only been sent 17 days later. She asserted that she had only looked at the body of the letter she had found on the system and had not altered or backdated it.
The tribunal found, on the balance of probabilities and in light of the evidence of the firm’s head of IT, that Ms Patel did not dictate the letter on 12 January; rather, she had created it on 29 January and changed the date.
This conduct was dishonest, lacked integrity and damaged public trust, it held.
In mitigation, Ms Patel said she had been managing three departments at the time and was struggling with the volume of work. At the time, she had been feeling unwell and also dealing with matters in her personal life, which included caring for her mother.
Strike-off is the default sanction in cases involving dishonesty unless there are exceptional circumstances, and here the SDT found they were some when the case was viewed holistically.
It afforded the mitigation about her working conditions, ill-health and personal circumstances only “limited weight”, but went on to find that this was not “a carefully planned act of dishonesty”.
Rather, it was “a response to the pressure experienced from her colleague’s enquiries”.
The action of creating and backdating the document “lasted a very short period of time and was in effect a momentary lapse of judgment in an otherwise unblemished legal career”.
The tribunal ordered that Ms Patel be suspended from practice for a period of 12 months and for that period to be suspended for 24 months. She was ordered to pay costs of £10,000.
Niranjana Patel should be struck off the register. It similar to claiming for work that’s not been done. Whether or not the client was disabled in any way is irrelevant.