High-profile solicitor-advocate Alan Blacker has failed in his attempt to stop the Solicitors Regulation Authority publishing details about his exchanges with the regulator.
Following a private hearing in Manchester last week, the High Court rejected Blacker’s claim for injunctive relief and granted the SRA’s application for strike-out.
Blacker, who also goes under the name The Rt. Hon. Lord Harley, was referred to in the judgment as Dr Blacker. He came to wider public attention in August 2014, when he was described as ‘like something out of Harry Potter’ by a trial judge.
The court heard an anonymous person (referred to as YZ) had made a freedom of information request to the SRA relating to Blacker and his dealings with the charity Joint Armed Forces Legal Advocacy Services and the company Dr A. Blacker & Co. JAFLAS.
The passage of the request was ‘not entirely smooth’, with YZ challenging certain aspects of the release of information and the SRA admitting some of its responses were not accurate.
An adjudicator upheld that six closed files should be made available to YZ in redacted form. Three further files were withheld.
Blacker sought to restrain the release of the six files and requested that all nine files were returned to him.
At the hearing, orally he also explained that he was bringing a claim in damages, limited to £50,000, for breach of the Data Protection Act.
The Law Society, named as the defendant, sought to strike out his claim and secure summary judgment.
The court heard that the SRA had sent an email to Blacker on 3 September 2015 attaching documents that were to be disclosed and asking for comments within 48 hours.
The court also heard that previously the SRA had published the schedule of the adjudicator’s decision in redacted form, but that the ‘redacted’ text could be read simply by downloading the schedule and changing the background colour.
None of these actions, said Mr Justice Fraser, ‘could be said to be behaviour likely to do anything other than inflame relations’ between Blacker and the SRA.
The SRA, which adopts a voluntary code for responding to FoI requests, said it was under no compulsion to give any solicitor the right to make representations before publishing information about them.
Fraser said the SRA had ‘glossed over’ the issue about redaction, but said it was a mistake that should not have been made.
But the judge stated he had seen the disputed documents and they contained no personal information about Blacker. The adoption of the Freedom of Information Act code, he said, could not be subject to a claim for damages by a solicitor unhappy with its terms.
Blacker’s reliance on the Human Rights Act was ‘misconceived’, said Fraser, as there were no civil or criminal proceedings relating to the closed files and no private information about him.
The judge ruled the SRA is entitled to maintain the three closed files as part of its regulatory function and Blacker could have no claim to them.
He struck out the claim as there were no reasonable grounds for bringing it. The application by the SRA thereby succeeded.
