The Post Office ‘where were the lawyers?’ post

Hamilton and Others-v-Post-Office [2021] EWCA Crim 577 is a pretty gut wrenching tale of corporate misdeeds. All the wrong doing is rather faceless at the minute, but it cannot – one hopes – remain that way for too much longer. For reasons which I will make clear some of those faces will very likely be …

Independence MsA takes

The FT have prised open some details on a case last heard in 2019 which illustrates some of the interesting problemns inherent in independent investigations. In this case, Ms A claimed unfair constructive dismissal and sex and disability discrimination, which included an allegation that she was raped by a UBS employee and failures in the …

Sloshed not sick?

The profession has certain stories it tells itself which are probably not true. One such is exposed by an interesting piece of US research by Listokin and Noonan (published here and available without a paywall, I think, here. That story is that, “lawyers are uniquely unhappy”, in particular that they suffer higher levels of mental …

Candour in Context: who’s activism should we spotlight?

The travails of Duncan Lewis, Stephanie Harrison QC and the rest of her team, in the R (DVP & Others) v SSHD[2021] EWHC 606 (Admin) [the DVP case] can be seen as grist to the Government's anti-activist lawyers mill. It's a toe-curling judgment. I am going to talk about the facts of the case at …

Discipline Data: women, the young, and the old, but in what order?

An interesting paper by Andy Boon and Avis Whyte has been published (paywalled I suspect) on SDT cases. the authors have painstakingly assembled data to be compared across three periods: 1994 to 1996 (collected by Davies), 2008 (with Boon, Whyte and Sherr) and 2015. They point to a strange failure of SDT case volumes to …

PCP v Barclays: The Dirty Work of Lawyering?

There are a number of ethical issues posed by the PCP v Barclays case which Richard summarised yesterday. If you’ve read the summary you will know that two sets of transactions are in issue. 1. The $3bn loan made by Barclays to Qatar’s Ministry of Finance as part of a significant equity injection to shore …

Something smelly at Barclays…

Amanda Stavely has had half a last laugh in her unsuccessful litigation against Barclays. She lost on causation but the court found material dishonesty on the part of her nemesis, Roger Jenkins, former Chairman of the Bank’s Middle Eastern business. The judgment is a monster (PCP Capital Partners v Barclays [2021] EWHC 307 (Comm) at …

Davies vs Greene: An analysis

As a follow up to my piece in the Times, you can register and get a free read I think, I set out the longer piece I prepared whilst thinking this case through. There is of course no substitute for reading the case in full if you can to make up your own mind about …

Ongoing competence: BS or 5750?

To those of you who get the reference in the title. Congratulations. You have come a long way. For the rest, BS5750 was a quality assurance system, all the rage in the 1990s, which came to mind, alongside legal aid practice management standards, and other joys, as I read the LSB's 'Ongoing Competence' report. This …

Lawyers for the Post Office Machine

The Criminal Cases Review Commission published its submission to the Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry. For those of you unaware, in broad brush terms, this Inquiry relates to the prosecution of large numbers of sub-postmasters for failures which the defendants say arose out of the flawed Horizon accounts system run by the Post Office. The …