Duncan Hugh Ranton

Findings — machine-extracted (anthropic-batch:claude-opus-4-8); verify against the decision

Duncan Hugh Ranton, an assistant solicitor at Kingsley Napley, failed to lodge Points of Dispute by the deadline in a sealed Consent Order, then created a falsified copy of the Consent Order (CO2) showing a later deadline and sent it to his client to conceal the missed deadline. He also misled the opposing firm in a letter dated 30 April 2012 by falsely claiming the Points of Dispute were with the client and costs draughtsman, and misled his employer during the internal investigation and at interview on 8 May 2012. All five allegations were proved beyond reasonable doubt, and dishonesty was expressly found in relation to allegations 1.1, 1.3, 1.4 and 1.5 under the Twinsectra test. With no exceptional circumstances, following Sharma the Tribunal struck him off the Roll and ordered costs of £2,615.05.

Duties found breached:

• Integrity
• Uphold public trust in the profession
• Act in the client's best interests
• Non-discriminatory acceptance and cab-rank
• Competence

Aggravating factors:

• Dishonesty
• Deliberate, premeditated and calculated course of action to conceal the failure
• Creation of a false document
• Conduct repeated and persisted in over a matter of days
• Concealment from the opposing firm, the client and his own employer
• Absented himself from proceedings and gave no explanation; ceased cooperating in recent months
• Empty offer to make good given he had been summarily dismissed

Mitigating factors:

• Previously unblemished career with no prior disciplinary matters
• Actions of relatively brief duration
• Cooperated with the Applicant and Tribunal at the start of proceedings
• Made wide-ranging admissions in correspondence and interview
• Asserted his judgement had been poor due to personal circumstances (though no cogent medical evidence)