City partner struck off for misleading court

A former City partner has been struck off for misleading the court in the course of litigation, the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal has ruled.

In a decision on Friday (14 February) which is yet to be published, the SDT upheld a number of allegations that litigator Andrew Shaw misled the court – in some cases dishonestly – when securing a freezing injunction against businessman Geoffrey Logue.

It is understood that Shaw, a former partner with Stewarts Law, will be appealing against the tribunal ruling.

In April 2010, Shaw obtained a freezing order against Logue on behalf of his client, US-based The Complete Retreats Liquidating Trust, following a ‘without notice’ application.

Logue, who once worked for Complete Retreats’ destination clubs business, got the order overturned in July that year after it emerged that Shaw had not complied with the duty of full and fair disclosure.

In his ruling on 23 July 2010, Mr Justice Roth said there had been “a series of independent breaches of the obligation to make full and fair disclosure” which he regarded as “serious”.

“They cannot be dismissed or diminished as marginal to the application for the freezing order,” Roth J said in Complete Retreats Liquidating Trust v Logue & Ors [2010] EWHC 1864 (Ch). “Taken together they led, in my judgment, to the court receiving a misleading picture as to the likely character and conduct of Mr Logue, and the strength of the case against him.”

Following the ruling, Logue started a private prosecution in the SDT against Shaw. The rarely used procedure allows any applicant to complain to the SDT about a solicitor’s conduct without having to go through the Solicitors Regulation Authority.

Nigel West, a partner at RadcliffesLeBrasseur (pictured), who represented Logue, said the SDT found most allegations against Shaw proven.

These included dishonestly providing the court with misleading information, failure to disclose details of third-party funding, providing misleading information to the court on the background allegations in the US proceedings that had prompted the application for the freezing order, and providing misleading information about Geoffrey Logue.

The SDT also found proven an allegation against Shaw’s assistant Craig Stephen Turnbull, a solicitor at Stewarts Law at the time, that he had dishonestly allowed the court to be misled. Turnbull was struck off.

West, who normally acts for defendants in the SDT, said private prosecutions were unusual and rarely went as far as a full tribunal hearing. In this instance, he said, there were a series of breaches and Logue had a strong case.

Peter Cadman, a partner in the regulation team at Russell-Cooke, said he would only come across private prosecutions “maybe once every two years”.

But, he added, they were typical of a sector where operators have little confidence in the regulator.

Cadman also said the decision was a reminder to litigators making ‘without notice’ applications that they had “a duty of utmost good faith, of absolute candour”.