Rodney Patrick William Etherington

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

The Respondent, a director and head of private client at his firm, repeatedly made false and misleading statements between 31 May and 2 July 2018 to two residuary beneficiaries of an estate (and via his secretary), falsely representing that a Part 64 Court application had been submitted and that he had heard from the Court, when no application had been lodged until July 2018. He admitted all five allegations and dishonesty. Dealt with on the papers by way of an agreed outcome. The Tribunal found the admissions properly made, that the conduct was dishonest under the Ivey test, and that with no exceptional circumstances the only appropriate sanction was strike-off. He was struck off the Roll and ordered to pay costs of £2,800.

Duties found breached:

• Integrity
• Uphold public trust in the profession

Aggravating factors:

• Dishonest conduct on five occasions
• Course of dishonest conduct over several weeks (May to July 2018)
• Direct control over circumstances
• Solicitor of 11 years' experience and head of private client department; high culpability
• Breached obligations to protect the public and reputation of the profession

Mitigating factors:

• No previous disciplinary findings
• Early admissions to firm and SRA and cooperation with investigation
• Showed insight into seriousness of misconduct
• Took over a long and contentious estate matter
• No financial gain; actions were to buy time to submit the application