‘Vaccine campaign’ solicitor fails in abuse of process application

A solicitor accused of improperly threatening legal proceedings has claimed complaints against him were made only to hamper his acting in employment tribunal proceedings.

However the Solicitors Regulation Authority told the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal yesterday that the employment case had ‘nothing to do’ with the allegations brought against Philip Julian Paul Hyland. 

Hyland, admitted in 1998, is due to face an SDT hearing later this year over allegations that he improperly threatened legal action when he sought a Covid-19 exemption to enable a client to travel to Brazil and not be required to self-isolate upon his return.

Hyland is also alleged to have sent a letter to the chair of the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) which improperly threatened legal proceedings over the Covid-19 vaccines. 

A two-day preliminary hearing this week saw the three-person panel refuse Hyland’s application for a stay. 

The tribunal heard that Hyland did not dispute he sent the correspondence.

Representing himself, Hyland said he had complained to the SRA chief executive ‘that the production notice was heavy handed and that I was involved in various cases and issues and…people might be using the SRA, to put it in the vernacular, to have a go at me’.

Benjamin Tankel, for the SRA, described Hyland’s claim as an ‘outlandish chain of events to propose’ and the allegations brought against Hyland were not related to the care home workers’ employment tribunal claim.

He added: ‘As far as we are aware the care home workers’ case is itself lacking merit. Mr Hyland will correct me no doubt if I am wrong in this. The care home workers’ case was struck out or failed in the first instance and that is why Mr Hyland is having to appeal.

‘In our case [there is a] big contrast, it’s a very different factual context. It’s a single person, not a care home worker, seeking exemption so he could travel to Brazil so he would not have to self-isolate for his own personal convenience. There are no care home workers or employment issues in this case in respect of either allegation.’

The hearing was told the SRA apologised to Hyland for ‘areas of overlap’ in the second production notice, alerting Hyland to the regulator’s investigation.

Speaking about the second correspondence to the MHRA chair, Tankel said: ‘This was never a serious legal claim, it was just as ideological campaign. There is no merit to the claim.’

The allegations against Hyland will now go to a substantive hearing, listed for five days in the summer. Written reasons for the panel’s decisions will follow.