'Misleading' mitigation leads to return date with SDT

A solicitor who was fined £20,000 by the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal has appeared before the SDT five years on over allegations that he allowed his lawyer to make misleading submissions.

Richard Gregory Barca, admitted in 1986 and a manager at Wilson Barca LLP, is accused of not stopping his lawyer from making submissions that the Solicitors Regulation Authority alleges to be misleading. He is also alleged to have entered into financial arrangements or given loans to exisiting clients where there was an own-interest conflict or significant risk of one.

Michael Collis, for the SRA, told the three-person panel yesterday: ‘[Barca] would have known only too well the extent to which he had been given financial assistance or loans to clients. He would have known only too well mitigation remarks made on his behalf in that 2019 hearing could create a misleading impression as to the extent he had been involved in such activities.’

He said comments made ‘could have given the impression that the incident before the tribunal was an isolated [one] which had not been repeated when the reality is the respondent had been involved in lending money or providing financial assistance to clients or former clients on a regular basis’.

The tribunal heard the regulator did not allege any wrongdoing on the part of Geoffrey Williams KC, who represented Barca in 2019 and represents him again at this week’s hearing.

Collis added: ‘It is not our case that he knew or suspected the submissions he was making were misleading or could be construed as misleading or was guilty for making the assertions he did.’

The SDT hearing, listed for five days, centres on allegations that Barca did not stop his representative from making remarks which were or could be misleading, as well as eight individual loans or financial assistance given by Barca to clients which the SRA argues gave rise to conflict or significant risk of it.

Those loans follow the deal at the centre of the 2019 hearing.  

Collis said: ‘Transaction number eight took place on 2 November 2018, only two months before the January 2019 hearing’.

Barca made admissions to parts of the allegations against him but denied dishonesty and recklessness. In relation to one allegation centred on own-interest conflict or a significant risk of own interest conflict, Barca admitted a significant risk but not an actual conflict in the cases of three clients.

Giving evidence, Barca said his hearing was not good during the 2019 tribunal and he now wears an aid. He added: ‘I am not saying I did not hear all of [mitigating submissions]. I could not follow every word. I got the gist but there would be words, even whole sentences, I did not catch.’

When asked by Williams if he was an honest man, Barca said: ‘I am.’

Williams also asked if ‘at any time’ Barca had felt ‘the tribunal might be misled [during the 2019 hearing]’.

Barca said: ‘Not at all. As far as I was concerned the SRA and SDT had all the information about me and chose not to pursue certain matters. I do not know why they had not pursued it.’

The hearing continues.