Stephen John Chubb

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

Stephen John Chubb, a partner at Clarkson Wright and Jakes Limited, faced five allegations arising from a series of property transactions involving the property 'W'. He admitted breaches of rules and lack of integrity but denied dishonesty. The Tribunal found all five allegations proved. Applying the Twinsectra test, it found dishonesty proved in respect of allegations 1.1 and 1.2 (creating and relying on a backdated Declaration of Trust submitted to HMLR), but not in respect of allegations 1.3, 1.4 and 1.5 (which involved failures to disclose to lenders, characterised as muddle/negligence rather than dishonesty). Given the findings of dishonesty and the absence of exceptional circumstances, the Tribunal ordered the Respondent struck off the Roll and to pay costs of £22,424.55.

Duties found breached:

• Handle inadvertently received material
• No baseless or threatened misconduct report
• Safeguard documents and limit liens

Aggravating factors:

• Dishonesty involving creation of a backdated Declaration of Trust
• Deliberate and planned actions
• Not an isolated incident - misconduct spanned April to July 2007 with continuing breaches of disclosure obligations
• Very experienced senior solicitor who knew or ought to have known conduct breached his obligations
• Caused serious harm to the reputation of the profession

Mitigating factors:

• Single transaction in an otherwise unblemished 40-year career
• No client money taken and no personal benefit
• Frank about lack of oversight and general approach (though not fully open about the backdated document)
• Cooperated with firm, insurers and the Applicant
• Positive testimonials and character references
• Showed considerable remorse