Aberdeen transport solicitor brings legal profession into disrepute

An Aberdeen solicitor has been found guilty of professional misconduct after undermining the 'vital public protection' role of Scotland's Traffic Commissioner.

Speaking after a decision by the Scottish Solicitors Discipline Tribunal (SSDT), commissioner Joan Aitken said that the solicitor in question, Michael Allan, had allowed himself to further the business interests of individuals whom she had removed from the haulage industry.

In a decision that has now been made public, the transport solicitor was found guilty of professional misconduct by the SSDT in May 2015. The tribunal censured Allan, fined him £1,000, and found him liable for expenses.

Allan was found guilty in respect of causing MSA Logistics Ltd to be subject to a seven-year period of disqualification by the Traffic Commissioner and also incurred the same period of disqualification for his role as the controlling mind of the business. The tribunal concluded this had brought the legal profession into disrepute.

Commenting on the outcome of the prosecution, Aitken said: 'Allan fell short of the standards a solicitor such as myself can expect of a fellow solicitor and I remain professionally and personally disappointed that he breached the trust expected of him as an operator and as a Scottish solicitor.'

She continued: 'I am glad that the tribunal has imposed censure, fine and expenses as its measure of the disrepute brought to the Scottish solicitor profession by Mr Allan. The context is vexing given that he allowed himself to further the business interests of persons whom I had taken out of goods vehicle operating. He undermined my vital public protection role.'

Following a public inquiry in Inverness on 22 November 2012, Aitken concluded that Allan had engaged in a 'gross breach of trust' and disqualified him from being involved in operator licensing for seven years. She also disqualified his company, MSA Logistics Ltd, from holding a licence for the same period.

As a practising solicitor, Allan had appeared before the commissioner, representing operator licence holders, on numerous occasions. However, he did not appear at the Inverness hearing into the licence held by his company. The inquiry was called after an investigation by the Vehicle and Operator Services Agency.

Investigators produced evidence indicating that MSA was a 'front' for a licence she had revoked in May 2009, in the name of Munro & Sons (Highland) Ltd.

She found Munro had day-to-day control of the drivers working for MSA Logistics Ltd, along with vehicle repairs, while the business had operated without the mandatory requirement of a transport manager.

In a written decision issued in January 2013, the Traffic Commissioner said: 'A real difficulty for Mr Allan will have been that he did not have enough time or discipline to attend to keeping matters in order and at proper arm's length from his clients and that it suited him to allow matters to slip such that more and more Mr Billy Munro and his companies became the actual operators of the vehicles.'