Martin Smith

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

Martin Smith, a partner in the property department at Simons Muirhead Burton, missed the statutory deadline (4 January 2023) for serving a Counternotice, impacting Clients A and B. He then created a letter and Counternotice falsely dated 3 January 2023, sent them to DKLM, and sent a misleading email on 11 January 2023 about when they were posted. He admitted all four allegations, including dishonesty and lack of integrity. On the papers via an agreed outcome, the Tribunal found dishonesty proven and, absent exceptional circumstances, struck him off the Roll and ordered costs of £10,000.

Duties found breached:

• Handle inadvertently received material
• Diligence and timeliness

Aggravating factors:

• Misconduct involved dishonesty
• Respondent sought to hide a missed deadline through acts of dishonesty

Mitigating factors:

• Admitted all allegations and associated breaches
• Cooperated by entering into an agreed outcome