A partner who let his clients wrongly believe for two years that their claim had been filed has been struck off the roll.
Benjamin Tisdall said he had never intended to mislead anyone but had communicated poorly and in a rush partly due to his emailing while travelling to court.
The Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal found that he had known the clients’ claim had not been lodged with the court but gave untrue statements to that effect. He repeated this misconduct when he advised the clients that the paperwork had been ‘resubmitted’ and did nothing to correct their belief that the claim was progressing.
The tribunal said Tisdall had been ‘dishonest and directly responsible for his actions’.
‘There was a clear breach of trust involved in his conduct,’ it added. ‘The respondent had stated that he had an excellent relationship with [his clients] and till he left the firm, they trusted and relied on him.
‘Although the initial action of informing [his clients] that he had filed the claim may not have been deliberately planned, the subsequent action in consistently maintaining that proceedings were issued involved some degree of planning.’
At the relevant time in 2018, Tisdall had been qualified for five years and become a partner with Plymouth firm Fursdon Knapper. His clients had emailed multiple times asking for confirmation that their claim had been lodged. Tisdall replied: ‘Your claim has been done on Monday, as I said it would be.’
He later told the tribunal he had meant to inform the clients that work on preparing the claim had been completed, with a view to issuing it. Any misunderstanding was a result of his poor communication, he submitted.
Around nine months later, the clients asked for further updates and urged that no more time be wasted. Tisdall said he was arranging ‘to have everything resubmitted’ and that ‘I will make sure this is not left to drift’.
The tribunal heard that Tisdall emailed four months later to advise there was no way to speed up the court process but he was ‘confident’ that progress would be made shortly: the prosecuting SRA said this was clear evidence he furthered the false impression that proceedings had been issued.
Tisdall stated that sometimes when being chased for updates on the case, he provided them whilst commuting to court and this would account for some of his strange use of language and typographical errors. He was away from the office 80% of the time dealing with court commitments and was trying to cope with the pressures of a very busy work schedule.
The tribunal ordered that he be struck off and pay £19,877 in costs.
