Compliance is key
March 10, 2011
Posted by:Sonita Hayward
The solicitor in question was 3 years PQE and working under supervision as a locum in a local authority child protection team. Directions were made for reports from health visitors and other professionals to be filed in various cases that she was working on. Despite a number of extensions being sought from and granted by the court so that the information could be obtained, the solicitor did not actually make any requests for the information required by the court directions. The cases were all in relation to vulnerable children and the work was sensitive in nature.
The solicitor was young, relatively inexperienced, and had not been given the substantial support and supervision required for the work that she was undertaking. The tribunal did not think that she had intended to deceive anyone but that she had been foolish to continue to work in circumstances where she was overwhelmed and did not have suitable support. The tribunal decided to suspend the solicitor in question from practice for 6 months on the grounds that she:
- failed to take prompt and proper action to ensure compliance with court directions;
- failed to act with frankness and good faith towards colleagues, legal representatives of other parties and others; and, finally,
- caused misleading and inaccurate information to be provided to the court.
Whenever standards begin to fall especially to this extent, a professional negligence claim becomes a real possibility. If the claims had been struck out as a result of non-compliance with the court directions then the children could have suffered real prejudice. Thankfully this does not appear to have been the outcome here, but next time it may be a different story.