Ronald George Paterson

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

Mr Paterson, a director at Eversheds, was alleged to have breached Principles 2 and 5 and paragraphs 1.2 and 1.4 of the Code by secretly listening in (via a phone call with his client Mr Davidson) to a company board meeting from which he had been barred on 22 May 2020. The SRA argued this undermined public trust, lacked integrity, abused his position by taking unfair advantage, and misled the company. The Tribunal found Mr Paterson was not 'in attendance' at the meeting (he could not see or address participants and was not minuted), that his client was entitled to receive real-time legal advice and to relay what was said, so listening in was not eavesdropping. There was no evidence anyone was misled, and no subjective intent to take unfair advantage. All allegations were dismissed. The Respondent's application for costs of £101,740.20 was refused; applying Flynn Pharma and Baxendale-Walker, proceedings were not improperly or unreasonably brought, so no order as to costs was made.