A conveyancing solicitor who arranged a property sale despite being made aware her client was a vulnerable elderly woman has been fined.
Sonia Hunjan, of Essex firm Rana Legal, was alerted on three occasions by a local authority that the client may have lacked the mental capacity to make decisions about her property and affairs, including decisions about the sale of her home.
The firm had been instructed in 2017 on the sale of the woman’s property for £140,000. Accompanied by her two sons, she stated that she shared a bank account with one son and wished the proceeds to be paid into that account.
The Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal heard that emails warning about the client’s mental capacity were ‘unambiguous’ and not complicated. In interview, Hunjan said she focused on the outstanding charges on the property and not the client’s mental capacity. Exchange and completion took place simultaneously three weeks after instruction.
Following the sale the local authority wrote to Hunjan asking whether she had taken any steps to check the client’s capacity. This correspondence stated that the client, in respite care, was upset at learning the property had been sold, which she could not remember happening.
Hunjan, admitted in 2001, replied that the client had said her property was being repossessed and she needed to sell it, and that she had not mentioned she was in care.
The tribunal said the public would be ‘alarmed’ by a solicitor who facilitated a transaction where she was on notice that the client lacked the relevant capacity. It added: ‘[Hunjan] is an experienced conveyancing solicitor. Indeed she was so senior that the principal of the firm felt that he could leave her to conduct and be responsible for her own caseload, without any significant supervision. A solicitor with that level of experience, in a specialist area, ought to have known better.’
Hunjan was also found to have facilitated a transaction which bore the hallmarks of illegitimate attempts to circumvent third party interests, without making adequate enquiries about the arrangement.
The tribunal heard that a joint tenant on an east London property, named as Miss D, had entered a restriction on the register preventing its sale by a sole proprietor except by a trust or order of the court. Miss D was in a relationship with Hunjan’s client and died two years after entering that restriction.
The client told Hunjan that Miss D did not have mental capacity when she made the restriction and the solicitor accepted this with no further enquiries. She then helped her client achieve a quick property sale for unidentified ‘business reasons’ at a 25% discount on the true value.
The tribunal said Hunjan missed warning signs which were ‘clear, obvious, several and extended over a period of several months’.
‘Instead of scepticism, [Hunjan] went so far as to seek to assist the sale by finding a buyer. She was pliable and was easily persuaded by [the client] to side-step the restriction. Only a manifestly incompetent solicitor would have missed these warning signs, failed to take obvious lines of enquiry and facilitated such a scheme.’
Hunjan agreed a £15,000 penalty with the SRA and the tribunal accepted this. Hunjan must also pay £23,650 costs.
