A trainee legal executive who discontinued a client’s case without getting their consent has been removed from the profession.
Megan Murphy, a former employee with Bolton firm Goldman Knightley, also misled the client and her firm about what happened before swiftly admitting her misconduct.
Murphy, who was supervised by a solicitor, had conduct of a holiday sickness claim against a travel company when in October 2019 she filed a notice of discontinuance with the court. This was done without the client’s consent or knowledge.
The defendant solicitors then made an application to set aside the discontinuance on the grounds of fundamental dishonesty and costs were awarded against the client, with his case struck out.
Murphy emailed the client claiming that the trial date had been vacated due to a lack of judicial availability when this was not the case. She failed to mention the notice of discontinuance.
In February 2020, when the firm looked into the handling of the matter, Murphy misled a director by stating that she had the client’s consent to discontinue when she knew this was not true. She also misled a consultant solicitor on the same point less than a week later. But three days after that last untrue statement, she signed a statement drafted by her firm in which she admitted the whole thing, including having misled her client.
The Solicitors Regulation Authority said Murphy should be disqualified in the public interest to prevent her undertaking a similar role at another firm. ‘As she was working in a client facing role dealing with clients, her dishonest conduct shows a lack of integrity and may cause public trust and confidence in the profession to be diminished,’ added the SRA.
It was accepted this was an isolated incident, as confirmed following an internal review of Murphy’s files, and she had fully cooperated with the SRA investigation. She was given a section 43 notice and ordered to pay £300 costs.
