The High Court has granted more time for a former law firm director to challenge a coruscating judgment against her more than eight years after it was handed down.
In the latest twist of a long-running dispute involving Bradford firm Khan Solicitors, His Honour Judge Shanks made the order to reconsider Layla Dean-Verity’s application for an extension of time.
Dean-Verity, formerly known as Anjum Tahirkhell, had been a finance director with the firm along with her then-husband Mohammed Khan and Rashid Majid, who were solicitors.
After the marriage broke down, Dean-Verity was sacked on the grounds of serious financial impropriety, prompting her to bring a claim for unfair dismissal.
In 2014, Employment Judge Cox ruled that Dean-Verity had indeed carried out four categories of unauthorised transaction for her own benefit, describing her, according to Shanks HHJ, as ‘one of the most unreliable witnesses she had ever heard’.
Majid immediately forwarded a copy of the judgment to the media and posted it on social media, reporting Dean-Verity to the police and the Solicitors Regulation Authority. She was subsequently banned from working for any law firm under a section 43 order.
In 2018, Majid and the firm started a legal claim against Dean-Verity and her former husband for more than £800,000. The pre-action letter included 855 pages of ‘essential documents’, which Verity-Dean said now undermined the employment tribunal’s decision.
She lodged an appeal soon after and applied for reconsideration of the 2014 judgment in February 2020, including these new documents as part of her case.
The employment judge decided not to extend the time for the application, saying any such appeal should have been made within 14 days of the judgment.
Meanwhile, the civil claim by Majid and the firm came before District Judge Goldberg in Leeds. He struck it out as an abuse of process, suggesting that the long wait to bring proceedings ‘may have been deliberate delays [with] the air of exacting some form of retribution against [Dean-Verity], which is extraordinary for a professional practice’.
But there followed a laying down of arms. In April this year, there was a comprehensive agreement to bring an end to the High Court proceedings, on the basis that Dean-Verity would discontinue her claim.
The High Court agreed there had been a material error of law in not allowing the extension of time, based on the prejudice that would be caused to the claimant. It ordered that the matter be remitted to the employment judge to reconsider the question of an extension and whether the 2014 judgment should be set aside. Given the agreement the parties had reached, the judge added, the decision need not go any further.
