Schools v Solicitors Regulation Authority

A disciplinary tribunal may proceed in a solicitor’s absence, but it must exercise that discretion with the utmost care and consider each adjournment application on its merits. An adjournment policy cannot be applied inflexibly or treated as prescribing a particular form of medical evidence. Temporary inability to secure representation may justify an adjournment where funds will certainly become available within a defined period. Where that is uncertain, and the practitioner has voluntarily decided not to attend unless represented, the tribunal may proceed if an adjournment would achieve nothing.

The claimant appealed under section 49 of the Solicitors Act 1974 against the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal’s decision to strike him from the roll and order payment of costs. The tribunal had refused applications to adjourn a disciplinary hearing because of alleged ill health, inability to fund representation and the claimant’s stated intention not to attend without lawyers. The claimant also sought to add challenges to the findings of misconduct, sanction and costs.

The central issues were whether the tribunal had lawfully and fairly refused to adjourn, and whether the appeal should be adjourned to permit new grounds to be advanced.

1. The application to adjourn the appeal was refused. The claimant had known the outcome for months, had drafted his own grounds and had identified no arguable basis for the proposed new challenges. Advancing wholly new grounds immediately before and during the hearing was inconsistent with the overriding objective.
2. The tribunal’s decision of 2 May 2014 could not stand on its stated reasoning. Its approach to the medical evidence was seriously flawed. It applied the adjournment policy with unjustified scepticism, failed to consider the application on its merits and did not adequately address the risk that the claimant would be involuntarily absent. The policy required a case-by-case assessment and did not prescribe an ideal template for medical evidence.
3. The tribunal nevertheless reached the correct result on 2 May. The evidence established the recent diagnosis of a deep vein thrombosis, but the consequences for attendance required further exploration. The proper course would have been to leave the hearing in the list, require better evidence and permit renewal of the application.
4. On 12 May, the tribunal was entitled to conclude that the claimant had voluntarily decided not to attend unless he could secure legal representation. The medical evidence showed that he was unfit to travel at that date, but the requested six-month adjournment was driven by the uncertain prospect of releasing frozen funds, rather than by the period of medical incapacity. The tribunal was entitled to conclude that an adjournment might achieve nothing.
5. A rule that inability to afford representation does not generally justify an adjournment is lawful, provided each case is considered on its merits. Where funds will certainly become available within a defined period, an adjournment may be justified; that condition was absent here.
6. The appeal was dismissed.

The appeal was brought from the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal’s reserved decision of 27 June 2014. The High Court (Administrative Court) dismissed the appeal.