Conviction: Solicitor was driving Jaguary XS
The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) was “not justified” in alleging that a solicitor convicted of drink-driving concealed the extent of her wrongdoing to her firm, the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal (SDT) has ruled.
As a result, the tribunal slashed its claim for costs by more than three-quarters.
At the time of her conviction, Elizabeth Thomson was a residential conveyancing partner at Kent firm Boys & Maughan but left the firm as a result and is currently working as a freelance solicitor.
In November 2022, while driving a Jaguar XS whose registration ended ‘LLB’, the solicitor was stopped for drink driving after multiple 999 calls from the public about her erratic driving.
Indeed, an off-duty police officer had been so alarmed that he had begun to follow her until a police car managed to stop her, but not before she had hit two cars coming from the opposite direction.
By that stage, she had a front wheel facing the wrong direction, with a shredded tyre resulting in the alloy wheel hitting the road and emitting sparks.
Ms Thomson was found to be nearly three times over the limit and was convicted in April 2023 of drink driving, driving without due care and attention, and failing to stop after two collisions.
She was sentenced to 12 weeks’ imprisonment, suspended for a year, 80 hours of unpaid work and a 26-month driving ban, and ordered to pay a victim surcharge of £145 and costs of £80.
She self-reported to both the firm and the SRA the following day. Before the SDT, as well as being charged over the conviction, Ms Thomson was accused of failing to disclose the full details of it to Boys & Maugham.
It was claimed she told the firm’s compliance officer for legal practice, senior partner Andrew Baker, only that she had been fined for a single drink-driving offence.
Further, she was accused of telling the SRA that the firm was happy to continue her employment when it did not know the extent of her convictions and sentence.
Eventually, on 4 January 2024, the equity partners held a disciplinary meeting, following which Ms Thomson agreed to resign.
The solicitor denied these two allegations and the SDT sided with her version of events.
It noted that none of the three partners of the firm involved had taken notes of the meetings or telephone calls with Ms Thomson when she had informed them about what had happened.
“This was surprising, given the seriousness of the incident on 5 November 2022 and the respondent’s subsequent conviction(s),” the SDT said.
“As the COLP of the firm, Mr Baker would have been, in particular, expected to have taken notes of the call with the respondent on 18 April 2023, even if the respondent had not disclosed the full extent of her convictions and sentences as Mr Baker claimed in his witness statement.”
There were also no minutes from the partners’ meetings disclosed to the tribunal and the SDT said it found the three partners’ accounts of a senior management meeting about the matter “inconsistent with each other”.
Further, Mr Baker had admitted that – by July 2023 at the latest – he was aware of Facebook posts from November 2022 that outlined what had happened and the SDT said “it would have in any event been reasonable for him to make further enquiries about the respondent’s convictions and/or assume that there had been more than one conviction”.
It went on: “The tribunal considered that the consistent response from the firm’s senior partners was that they did not treat the respondent’s convictions with the seriousness they deserved at the time. Instead, they had seemed to consider that this was nothing to worry about.
“The tribunal found the respondent to be a wholly credible witness, who had been honest in her account of how events unfolded and what she had believed at the time, particular on the call with Mr Baker on 18 April 2023.
“The tribunal further found that during her conversation with Mr Baker on 18 April 2023 and thereafter with him and others at the firm, the respondent had relied on the advice of her criminal barrister and solicitor and had described her offences by using the same terminology as her legal representatives had used when referring to the offences.”
It concluded that there was “no evidence” to suggest that Ms Thomson had sought to hide or mislead the firm. “On the contrary, the tribunal considered that the respondent had made immediate disclosure.”
Knowing that the criminal conviction documents would be publicly available, “there could not have been any motivation for the respondent to seek to hide the extent of her convictions and sentences and mislead the firm or the applicant in any way.”
Moreover, Ms Thomson’s other witnesses had supported her account. “The tribunal also heard evidence of the respondent’s good character and how the incident on 5 November 2022 had been a one-off incident, a stupid mistake in a long and other unblemished and well-established career.”
As a result, the allegation about misleading the SRA also fell away.
Her conviction reflected “a grave error of judgment, which resulted in a serious criminal penalty” and a fine of £17,500 reflected this.
The SRA sought costs of £11,131 but the SDT only allowed it £2,500 because the pursuit of the allegations that had been rejected was “not, in the tribunal’s view, justified”.
Leave a Comment