In what was billed by The Lawyer as “a keenly awaited judgment”, Michael McLaren QC and Richard Coleman (in Richard’s last case before taking silk) on behalf of the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) successfully resisted an appeal to the Court of Appeal by a solicitor (Mr. Dennison) against being struck off. The Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal (SDT) had found Dennison to have been dishonest in the context of the well-known TAG (The Accident Group) scandal, but unusually had not struck Dennison off the Roll. Michael and Richard on behalf of the SRA successfully appealed the SDT decision to the Divisional Court, which ordered Dennison to be struck off the Roll. Dennison then appealed against the Divisional Court judgment. The CA judgment of March 2012, dismissing Dennison’s appeal, reinforces not only the gravity of a finding by the SDT of dishonesty by a solicitor, but also the narrowness of the exceptional circumstances in which dishonest solicitors will not be struck off the Roll. Also, the CA did not accept the appellant’s argument that the recent increase in the amount of fines able to be imposed by SDTs affected the well-established principles established in the cases of Bolton and Salsbury
http://www.judiciary.gov.uk/Resources/JCO/Documents/Judgments/sra-v-dennison-judgment-03042012.pdf
