In a ruling last week, in Beckwith v Solicitors Regulation Authority [2020] EWHC 3231 (Admin), the High Court overturned the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal’s ruling that Beckwith failed to act with integrity and brought the profession into disrepute.
The claims against the former Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer insurance partner concerned alleged sexual activity in July 2016 with a junior female colleague who was ‘heavily intoxicated to the extent that she was vulnerable and/or her judgment and decision-making ability was impaired’. Beckwith was alleged to have breached Principles 2 and 6 of the SRA Handbook.
However, the President of the Queen’s Bench Division and Mr Justice Swift held: ‘Principle 2 or Principle 6 may reach into private life only when conduct that is part of a person's private life realistically touches on her practise of the profession…or the standing of the profession…Any such conduct must be qualitatively relevant.’
They warned: ‘Regulators will do well to recognise that it is all too easy to be dogmatic without knowing it; popular outcry is not proof that a particular set of events gives rise to any matter falling within a regulator's remit.’
They quashed the tribunal’s order that Beckwith pay a fine of £35,000 and set aside the ‘alarming’ £200,000 costs order.
John Gould, partner, Russell-Cooke, said: ‘This is a very significant judgment not just for the approach to inappropriate behaviour outside of practice but also more generally.
‘It lets air into a longstanding conceptual vacuum in which identifying what should properly concern regulators is obscured by popular outcry and circular concepts such as undermining public confidence. It pulls the assessment of conduct back to seriousness and demonstrable relevance to practice.
‘Abuse of power is relevant but simply behaving “inappropriately” is not. Misconduct must be referrable to the rule book not to the free-floating views of regulators or tribunals. The conceptual framework is not finished but this is a solid start.’
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