P Douglass, & K Colton & Another

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

Three respondents at JW Mitchell Dodds & Co / Adamsons were involved in a large-scale mortgage fraud through buy-to-let remortgage and back-to-back conveyancing transactions where valuations/sale prices greatly exceeded purchase prices, conflicts of interest were ignored and lender (SPML) was not told material facts. All allegations were admitted except a dishonesty allegation against partner Philip Douglass. The Tribunal found his conduct dishonest by objective standards but was not satisfied on the subjective limb of the Twinsectra test, so dishonesty was not proved. Douglass was suspended indefinitely; the employee solicitor was fined £10,000; and the clerk Keith Colton was made subject to a Section 43(2) order. Costs (applicant sought c.£44,000) were ordered subject to detailed assessment, apportioned 85% to Douglass, 10% to the second respondent and 5% to Colton.

Duties found breached:

• Proper basis for allegations
• Fair dealing with unrepresented parties
• Non-discriminatory acceptance and cab-rank
• No conflict between current clients

Aggravating factors:

• Scale of the fraud - one of the largest mortgage frauds encountered by police, 88 remortgage and 26 back-to-back transactions
• Douglass an experienced conveyancing solicitor who had practised during the 1990s property crash and knew of warning cards
• Complete disregard of SPML's written instructions and failure to disclose material facts to the lender
• Acting for all parties including his own (later) wife as vendor in one transaction
• Prior appearance before the Tribunal in 1989 (isolated incident)

Mitigating factors:

• Numerous positive character references confirming honesty and trustworthiness
• Overheated housing market and lax lending policies at the time
• Correspondence with and assurances from SPML relied upon
• Junior respondents inexperienced in such transactions, acting under supervision and instruction of the principal
• Apologies and admissions to all allegations save dishonesty

⚠ figures not found verbatim in the source were dropped: ["review_dishonesty_finding_cue_present"]