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The timing of an email did not matter; it is what was in it that was said to count by the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal.
The case of Solicitors Regulation Authority v Roger Brian Allanson CAse No 12131-2020 SDT culminated in the solicitor being struck off.
There was an email issued at 6.34am by the former solicitor who informed the Tribunal that the firm was not open at 6.30am in the morning and therefore the email was not sent in the course of business.
The Tribunal said the timing was
“completely irrelevant; it was the content that mattered.”.
Two emails were in question as follows and held by the Tribunal to have been “clearly inappropriate…The Tribunal rejected the Respondent’s case that the emails were jocular… the emails were inappropriate and offensive“:
In an email to Mr AL sent at 06.34 on 25 February 2019, the Respondent had written:
“The fact you make wild assumptions to support your personal hostility towards me makes damages for defamation top of the agenda for the meeting yet to come. Mark Twain once said “it’s better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than open it and remove all doubt”. I can’t think why that sprang to mind, but curiously it did. Still want to meet?”.
In another email that day the Tribunal noted the following:
In another email to Mr AL sent later the same day at 11.05 the Respondent had written:
“You are unable to accept that you are making wild and untruthful accusations that I have been prosecuted and found guilty. I have not but to level the accusation and then repeat it “if it quacks like a duck…” is the behaviour of the person Mark Twain had in mind. It is not me who needs the legal advice and I suggest you take it before we meet”.
