The SRA has apologised after being ordered to pay £180,000 for the botched and unsuccessful prosecution of a City lawyer.
The Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal heard that the regulator issued proceedings against Simon James Price despite the SRA’s own investigation officer (IO) having changed her mind about the merits of the case.
The IO wrote a statement in May 2023 setting out that there was no proper basis for referring Price to the tribunal. This was not disclosed to him until August 2024 and it was not referred to in the SRA’s application in June 2024 to withdraw proceedings.
The tribunal concluded that the interests of justice and fairness had required the SRA to include the investigator’s report in its bundle in the knowledge that they no longer supported the decision to prosecute. The ruling added: ‘The tribunal found that the proceedings had been improperly brought. This was a case where, due to the SRA’s conduct, a costs order should be made and it would not cause a chilling effect on the regulator, rather it would ensure that the regulator acted in a fair, transparent and responsible manner when bringing proceedings.’
Price’s legal team had wanted the SRA to pay more than £400,000 towards his costs, but the tribunal decided on £184,000.
Following the decision, an SRA spokesperson said: ‘We accept the tribunal’s decision and acknowledge that we should have done better. We have learned lessons about our processes, and we are sorry that Mr Price had to go through parts of the disciplinary process unnecessarily.’
Price is now at a City practice, although he was with a different firm at the time of the alleged misconduct (the firm’s name was not disclosed in the judgment). The allegation was not set out in detail in the judgment, but it was noted that the matter in question related to due diligence on a single client from more than 10 years ago. Price denied misconduct in a reply dated June 2024.
The SRA argued that it had changed its assessment of whether to proceed following a lengthy and detailed answer from Price which he had not raised in representations made in 2023. This had provided new information suggesting that others in the firm shared responsibility for any failures in due diligence there may have been.
The SRA further submitted that pursuing the case would consume a large amount of costs and tribunal time, with Price’s response drafted by three senior counsel including two KCs and coming to 422 pages in total.
Price’s lawyers submitted that the SRA offered no satisfactory explanation of why the investigator’s report was not disclosed for so long – and not even when the SRA applied to withdraw proceedings. This report was so significant because it evidenced ‘serious flaws’ in the SRA’s decision-making process and criticism of the regulator’s conduct.
It was argued that the prosecution was not reasonably brought, not in the public interest and fundamentally flawed. The SRA was aware of the core facts by August 2019, but it took six months to serve a production notice on Price’s former firm and 18 months to serve a production notice on Price. It then took another six months to produce a forensic investigation report and then a further two years for a referral decision to be made. By the time the SRA issued proceedings, 10 years had passed since the underlying matter.
