Lying solicitor struck off after he ‘abandoned’ client claim

An experienced solicitor who continuously and repeatedly lied to his client about the progress of their claim has been struck off.

The Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal heard that Andrew Mark Brett had effectively ‘abandoned’ the client’s professional negligence claim against another law firm, failing to move the matter forward for almost three years.

Witness statements were not exchanged, the case was not listed for trial and Brett sent no communications either to the opposing solicitors or the court.

The solicitor told his client that a hearing had been ‘pulled from the list at the last minute’ and that a new hearing date was a ‘definite fixture’. None of this was true and the tribunal found that Brett knew he was creating a misleading impression.

‘The public would be extremely concerned about a solicitor making false representations to his client about the progress of a case, particularly when that solicitor had made up court hearing dates and directions supposedly given at fictitious hearings,’ said the tribunal. ‘His actions were clearly planned. He had deliberately misled his client into believing that the case was progressing when it was not, and kept up that pretence over a protracted period, even remembering when to update Client A after a fictitious hearing had supposedly been listed.’

Brett, a solicitor with north London firm Barnes & Partners, was not represented or present at the hearing in April. He left the firm at the end of 2018, after which his failure to progress the case was discovered and reported to the Solicitors Regulation Authority.

In January 2020, the court struck out the claim as a result of Brett’s inaction. In his judgment, Master Sullivan said the client had been ‘actively misled by his then solicitor’ but refused relief from sanction.

The master found that none of the three letters on file had been received by opposing solicitors. The SRA submitted it was most unlikely that these letters were ever intended to be sent, because they referred to hearings which did not exist, or procedural steps which had not been taken, and would have elicited an incredulous response from the opposing solicitors.

The last piece of substantive work Mr Brett undertook was the drafting of his client’s witness statement, which was signed in May 2017. It should have been served in 2016 but was never in fact served.

Brett, admitted in February 1993, was struck off and ordered to pay £22,950 costs.