John Warner Smith & Alick Arlington Voliere

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

In case 10273-2009 the SDT found both respondents had set up and operated a sham partnership, Sovereign Chambers LLP. The Second Respondent (Voliere), admitted only days before, ran the firm without being qualified to supervise, practised while only permitted to remain in the UK as a student, created a client account shortage of about £10,000, gave misleading PI insurance information, breached undertakings, and held out the First Respondent (Smith) as a partner without his knowledge or consent. The Tribunal made an express finding of dishonesty against the Second Respondent under the Twinsectra test. The First Respondent was found to lack integrity but was NOT found dishonest; the Tribunal found he was vulnerable due to ill health and exploited. Both were struck off the Roll. For this case, costs were apportioned: First Respondent £5,000 and Second Respondent £9,000 (total £14,000).

Duties found breached:

• Full disclosure on ex parte applications
• No improper communication with the court
• Honesty
• Integrity
• Disclose material information to client
• No conflict between current clients
• Handle inadvertently received material
• No improper use of client money
• Safeguard documents and limit liens
• Competence
• Honour professional undertakings
• Good faith and courtesy to colleagues
• No improper fee-sharing or partnership

Aggravating factors:

• Second Respondent deliberately exploited a fellow solicitor (First Respondent) for his own purposes
• Catalogue of default across multiple matters
• Public exposed to great loss and profession to great damage
• Setting up a sham practice to give appearance of legitimacy and mislead lenders

Mitigating factors:

• First Respondent's ill health (stroke, brain haemorrhage, prostate cancer, eye problems) which may have clouded judgment
• First Respondent's long, almost 44-year, largely unblemished career
• First Respondent admitted some allegations
• First Respondent was guilty by omission rather than commission and was exploited by the Second Respondent