SDT considers misconduct allegations in private prosecution

Allegations of misconduct against a solicitor, accused in a private prosecution of not revealing the true extent of a neighbour dispute during a family member’s house sale, were amended on the final day of the substantive hearing.

The amendments include the removal of one point within one of the five allegations and a rewording of a point in another.

Keith Flavell, who was a managing partner at Harold Benjamin at the time of the alleged incident, appeared before the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal accused of professional misconduct. Unusually, the case was not brought by the Solicitors Regulation Authority but by married couple Caroline and Andrew Fulton, who represented himself, who were involved in the purchase of the property.

Flavell, admitted in 1983, denies all allegations against him. The hearing centres around the sale of a property belonging to Flavell’s brother and sister-in-law. The house had a history of neighbour disputes which Fulton claims were not disclosed in full in the seller’s property information form (SPIF).

Flavell, who left Harold Benjamin partly because of the allegations against him, is accused of encouraging his brother and sister-in-law to lie about the history of neighbour complaints and disputes and that he made suggestions for responses in the SPIF which he knew to be false and misleading. He previously told the court he was not involved in the conveyancing of his brother’s property but had only been ‘trying to help’.

In closing submissions Nicholas Bacon KC, for Flavell, said the prosecuting party had ‘lost sight of any objective analysis and that, with respect, has coloured quite substantially the approach he has taken to the evidence and the issues we are here to determine’.

He told the panel his client while giving evidence had come across as a ‘decent, honest and fair person’. He added: ‘[Flavell] said his mistake here was trying to be helpful to his brother. He plainly regrets ever getting involved but that is the nature of the man he is. He wants to be helpful, he told the tribunal that.’

Bacon described as ‘most serious’ the allegation that Flavell had encouraged his brother to lie about the history of complaints and disputes with the neighbours.

He added: ‘We submit that there was never and has never been any proper basis for that allegation to be made. It should never have been made. Our point on this is a very simple one, there is no evidence at all of any encouragement on the part of Keith to encourage Jeremy to lie. None whatsoever.’

‘We submit with real force that what was submitted on that form was not false based on Keith’s knowledge at the time.’

Fulton, in opening, had previously told the panel: ‘If a litigation solicitor knows of adverse documents…the solicitor must either insist on disclosure of documents or come off the record and cease acting. If a solicitor knows there are documents not being disclosed, he cannot continue to act in that matter for that client. This we say is professional conduct 101.’

The panel will now consider the matter and relist the case to announce its findings.