Private SDT prosecution concludes with strike-off

A rare private prosecution before the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal has led to the strike-off of a law firm’s former managing partner.

Keith Flavell, admitted in 1983, was accused of professional misconduct and dishonesty over his part in the sale of his younger brother and sister-in-law’s house. He denied all allegations against him.

The case was brought by the purchaser of the property Andrew Fulton, who represented himself.

Allegations against Flavell, which were found proven, included that he encouraged his brother to lie about the history of complaints and disputes with the neighbours, made suggestions in the seller's property information form which he knew to be false or misleading, deliberately refrained from making his conveyancing colleagues aware of the neighbour disputes, and permitted his firm at the time, Harrow firm Harold Benjamin, to continue to act in the transaction.

The panel also found dishonesty in those allegations proven. 

The SDT panel’s chair, Paul Lewis, said Flavell’s ‘motive for making those assertions was not financial but rather to assist his brother in creating a sale’.

Flavell, who was managing partner at Harold Benjamin at the time of the allegations, was found to be in breach of SRA principles 1, 2, 6 and 7.

Submissions as to costs were made in private. Fulton, in making the application for costs submissions to be made in private, described himself as a ‘reluctant prosecutor’. He told the panel during the remote hearing: ‘In light of the tribunal’s findings I should not have been here in the first place. The SRA should have followed up on their investigation and should have brought proceedings. In a very real sense, I am a reluctant prosecutor.’

Fulton added: ‘If the SRA had done what they should have done, the details I now wish to keep private [occupation and income] would have no risk at all [of being in the public domain].’

The three-person panel approved the application, stating that if proceedings had been brought by the regulator the ‘material in which [Fulton] wishes to remain private would have remained private’.

The panel returned to hear mitigating circumstances in open court. Nicholas Bacon KC, acting for Flavell, said the panel’s findings came as a ‘real shock’. He added: ‘We appreciate the seriousness of the findings. The panel made findings, it appears [with] all of the key allegations being made out.'

However he said: ‘This is not a case where dishonesty had been proven for own gain.’ Bacon told the panel that Flavell ‘is and always has been…very sorry for the situation that Mr and Mrs Fulton found themselves in after the purchase of the property’. He told the tribunal that the proceedings had had a ‘heavy heavy burden’ on Flavell who was ‘not a dishonest solicitor’.

Bacon added: ‘He stood down from an exemplary career as a solicitor in 2018 at the age of 62...  largely as a consequence of the burden this case placed on the firm.

‘He is not a dishonest man, he got himself in a pickle. Sitting here, there are genuine tears running down his cheeks. He is a man of real integrity and has been throughout the entirety of his career. He got himself into this pickle as a consequence of love and affection for his brother. I really plead on behalf of him that the tribunal can arrive at a sanction that is the least punitive in the tribunal’s discretion as possible.’

The panel retired to consider sanction for over an hour.

Returning, the panel struck off Flavell and ordered costs be paid to Fulton in the sum of £29,750.

The chair added: ‘This is a case with a sad history for many concerned and with profound consequences. We hope there is an opportunity now for both parties to put matters behind them and move on appropriately.’

A full judgment with reasonings, as usual, will follow in due course.

Responding to a Gazette inquiry about why the regulator had not brought a prosecution, an SRA spokesperson said: 'We await the SDT’s written decision to see what new information was brought forward.'