Scottish Human Rights Law Group

The appellant solicitor and his firm appealed against a decision refusing an injunction to prevent the respondent from publishing information about the outcome of a complaint made to the Law Society by a former client, and about an Ombudsman’s report regarding the handling of the complaint by the Law Society.

Held (amongst other matters) for a duty of confidentiality to be owed, the information in question had to be of a nature and obtained in circumstances such that a reasonable person in the position of the recipient ought to recognise that it should be treated as confidential.  The appellants had failed to show an arguable case as to why a reasonable person in the position of the complainant ought to have regarded the outcome of the complaint as something which he was bound to treat as confidential.  Many disciplinary inquiries were carried out in private without it being a necessary requirement that the result of the inquiry should be treated as confidential.  There was no reason why the fact that either party might inform others of the outcome could impair the integrity of the Law Society investigation.  The SRA had put forward its proposal to publish any decision to reprimand a solicitor; it foresaw no impairment to the integrity of the process but considered that public confidence would be increased in the solicitors’ profession and the way it was regulated.

Further, the purpose of the Law Society scheme was not to protect the reputations of solicitors against whom adverse findings were made, but was to provide a proper means of regulating the profession and maintaining public confidence in it.

This case was decided in the Court of Appeal on the 19 May 2009 and is available here.