The Gazette 1958-61

DECISIONS OF PROFESSIONAL INTEREST

Disciplinary Committee need not find express finding in respect of each separate complaint by solicitor. The Divisional Court (The Lord Chief Justice, Mr. Justice Ashworth and Mr. Justice Edmund Davies) dismissed this appeal by a solicitor from an order of the Disciplinary Committee of the Law Society made on August 20, 1959, that he should be suspended from practice for one year from September i, 1959. The Lord Chief Justice, dismissing the appeal on this and other grounds, said that the most serious complaints made against the solicitor were that he had utilised moneys in his clients' account for himself and that he had utilized the moneys for the benefit of other clients. The Disciplinary Committee had held that it was unnecessary to make any findings in respect of the complaints. It had been contended on behalf of the solicitor that it was the duty of the Disciplinary Committee to make express findings on each complaint. His Lordship could not see as a matter of law that that was so. The Disciplinary Com mittee must hear and determine the application as a whole. At the same time, as a matter of fairness to the solicitor concerned, it would sometimes be the case (as it was here) that the Disciplinary Committee should make definite findings on all the complaints made. These two complaints were very serious and the solicitor had had no exoneration from them. Where such complaints were not alleged in the alternative and were serious matters, it was only fair that the Disciplinary Committee should say whether they were justified or not justified. Leave to appeal to the Court of Appeal would be granted. (In Re a Solicitor—" The Times," 22 October, 1959.) On a taxation, the party ordered to pay costs is not entitled to see the contents of a brief delivered on behalf of a third party. Mr. Justice Stevenson held that on taxation of a bill of costs, the party who had been ordered to pay costs was not entitled to see the contents of a brief delivered on behalf of another party. At the end of a hearing of a contested divorce suit, which lasted a day and a half, the husband, Mr. Robert Hobbs, of Kampala, Uganda, was on Feb ruary 10, 1959, granted a decree nisi of divorce from Mrs. Dorothy Patricia Hobbs, of Kensington, on the ground of her adultery with the co-respondent. The co-respondent was ordered to pay the husband's costs. These costs, which amounted to about £800, included an item of £228 in respect of the husband's 48

Privilege upheld where copy of hospital case notes made for purpose of advising plaintiff in personal injuries claim. For the purpose of assisting and advising the plaintiff in connection with a claim for damages for personal injuries, and after the proceedings were clearly contemplated, the plaintiff's solicitors pre pared a copy of the case notes made and kept by the hospital at Birkenhead which the plaintiff had attended. In the action the defendants applied for disclosure of the copy. Held by the Court of Appeal (Lord Evershed, M.R., and Willmer, L.J.) affirming Elwes J. that as the copy of the case notes had been prepared by the solicitors for the purposes of the action, the docu ment was privileged from production. Per Lord Evershed, M.R. : On being afflicted with meningitis, the plaintiff went to a hospital in Birkenhead, and, in accordance with routine practice, case notes were made and kept by the hospital of his condition. As counsel for the defendants pointed out, no doubt rightly, meningitis may be of two kinds, traumatic or infective, and, according as it is one or the other, it may be deduced whether it was or was not the result of the accident. It seems to me that in this case, the document with which we are concerned is a copy which was made by the plaintiff's advisers for the purposes of the litigation in which the solicitors were acting for the party. That being so, it seems, I think, clear that the learned judge was right to say that he could not make the order. As a matter of common sense, I felt sympathy with counsel for the defendants, because plainly his conduct of the defence, including the matter of possible payment into court, would be materially affected by the medical evidence which the case notes would supply. I am, however, happy to say that anxiety and sympathy on those grounds is greatly lessened because counsel for the plaintiff has pointed out that he has, or that those advising him have—very sensibly, if I may say so—offered to disclose these documents provided that a similar courtesy or facility is shown on the other side, that offer being expressed to be without prejudice to what the strict rights may be ; and that counsel for the defendants has not accepted that offer, preferring to treat this as a matter of right or principle which, he says, may be important. I am happy to think that those advising the parties in practice have shown good sense in trying to assist to reach a conclusion of the matter. (Watson v. Cammell Laird & Co.—(1959) 2 All E.R. 757.)