A Court of Appeal judge created a 'great injustice' when he said the Law Society could tidy up its case against a solicitor and re-present it before the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal, three Court of Appeal judges have ruled. Mr Justice Simon Mayo, Mr Justice Woo Kwok-hing and Mr Justice William Waung Sik-ying made the criticism when overturning a ruling of Mr Justice Brian Keith. Mr Justice Keith ruled the society was entitled to appeal against the tribunal's dismissal of 259 charges against a solicitor. The solicitor's name and details of the allegations cannot be published for legal reasons. The solicitor appealed against the ruling. The society's first attempt to press the charges was rejected at the 'sifting' stage after the tribunal was forced to wade through a vast quantity of seized documents that were not properly presented or in line with the alleged acts of misconduct. In a written ruling, Mr Justice Waung strongly criticised the Law Society's case. '[It] has adopted, if we may say so, a wholly unsatisfactory procedure in making the complaint in respect of charges which were uncertain in number, unspecific in each of its particulars, unsupported by primary documents and confusing and internally self-contradictory and, finally, presented in such indigestible form that no professional tribunal could be blamed for throwing out the whole lot,' he said. Mr Justice Waung also said the tribunal could not be faulted for not going through 'with great pain' each and every unspecified charge to see if any of the charges 'so badly presented' could be saved. He said Mr Justice Keith ought to have refused leave because there was 'no realistic prospect' of the appeal succeeding.
