The High Court’s judgment in Ashley Hurst v Solicitors Regulation Authority overturning a Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal sanction could have wider application, a solicitor’s appeal over a 12-month suspension has heard.
Scott Halborg, a partner at Leicester firm Deals & Disputes Solicitors LLP, was suspended from practice for 12 months and ordered to pay £30,630 costs in April last year after he was found to have failed to conduct litigation in accordance with his duties as an officer of the court. He appealed the SDT’s finding and sanction arguing the SRA’s case was ‘entirely misconceived’.
Halborg, who represented himself during his appeal at the Royal Courts of Justice, said the sanction was ‘excessive, unnecessary and disproportionate’ adding: ‘It was not necessary to suspend for 12 months, indeed it was completely counter-productive to do so.’ There was ‘no reason for the SRA to actually become involved’, he said. ‘The sanction should have just been a rebuke given the technical breaches admitted in the statement of agreed facts and also the cooperation with the SRA throughout.’
Halborg told the court that ‘the conduct complained of was a series of judicial orders and comments’ related to his conduct ‘as a litigant rather than any act or omission as a solicitor’.