Queen's Bench President refers firm for personal contempt shown by solicitor and for misleading Court over deportation cases
The President of the Queen's Bench Division and soon-to-be Lord Chief Justice, Sir John Thomas, has referred a London-based firm to the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) over its conduct in immigration cases.
As regular readers of EIN news will know, this move follows a number of warnings by Sir John Thomas.
The new decision to refer Consilium Chambers LLP has been reported by both the Telegraph (and also here) and the Daily Mail.
According to the Telegraph, the principal solicitor with the firm had already been found in contempt of court after failing to appear before the High Court on three occasions in July. The solicitor is said to have blamed food poisoning, but did not produce the medical certificate that Sir John Thomas and Mr Justice Cranston had asked for.
The judges decided not to commit the solicitor, named as Benny Thomas, to prison for contempt and instead referred both him and Consilium Chambers LLP to the SRA for "an urgent investigation into the firm".
In addition to the personal contempt of the solicitor, the Telegraph says that Consilium is accused of making two emergency, out-of-hours applications to High Court judges for injunctions to stop deportations without giving the judges hearing the applications the full facts.
According to the Daily Mail, in one case, the firm told the Court it had been instructed only that day to try to stop the deportation when it had been handling the case for months.
The Mail says that Sir John Thomas and Mr Justice Cranston ruled yesterday that there had been 'a clear abuse of process' and that lawyers had been 'misstating their client's position'.
The Telegraph says that no-one at Consilium was available to comment.