Case of the week

Barrister fined for bad behaviour

I often read cases where costs are claimed in employment tribunals because either party has acted unreasonably or vexatiously in their handling of the case, but rarely do I come across this!

In a tribunal claim where a claimant was claiming £6,000 in unpaid wages it appears one of the representatives overstepped the mark and upset not just her opponent, but the judge too.

Although this isn’t a reported tribunal case, it is a disciplinary hearing on the back of a tribunal case, so I guess it qualifies as a ‘case of the week’.

Barristers are fine upstanding members of the legal world, working to a code of conduct and overseen by the Bar Standards Board. In all my dealings with barristers I have always found them to be helpful and courteous and they never make personal attacks by trying to demean their opponent.

However, occasionally they let those standards slip and in the disciplinary hearing of Ms Althea Brown, she let the standard slip in a big way!

Ms Brown is a very experienced advocate, having been called to the Bar in 1995, whereas her opponent Ms C was called in 2014. Both had considerable experience in the employment tribunal.

They were appearing in a run of the mill tribunal claim for unpaid wages (£6,000). Ms C had been representing the Respondent from the outset whereas Ms Brown had on recently been instructed (1 week before the hearing).

There was some discussion about the issues to be decided at the hearing. Normally, prior to the hearing, the issues to be decided are agreed by the parties representatives. This saves time as, on the day, both sides know what they have to prove/disprove to be successful.

On this occasion the list of issues had previously been agreed between Ms C and the barrister prior to Ms Brown taking over the case. However Ms contacted Ms C shortly before the hearing and said age was going to make an application to amend the issues but wouldn’t tell her what those amendments were.

On the first day of the hearing Ms Brown went through the issues one by one and wanted half of them deleted. Obviously his upset Ms C and the tribunal judge considered postponing and re scheduling the case to hear the amended issues.

It was during this exchange that Ms Brown overstepped the mark. She alleged that MsC had made an untruthful statement, she compared MsC’s submissions to the words of the literary character Violet Bott, ‘I’m going to scream and scream until I’m sick’ and she said that Ms C had ‘fundamental intellectual difficulty’.