The senior partner of Leigh Day is not a credible or honest witness, at least according to one member of the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal.

Senior partner Martin Day, partner Sapna Malik and associate Anna Crowther were prosecuted by the Solicitors Regulatory Authority for the manner in which they pursued claims of torture and murder made against British soldiers by Iraqi civilians. The claims resulted in the Al-Sweady public inquiry in 2014 which cost £31 million before it transpired that the most serious allegations were untrue.

After the longest hearing in SDT history, the defendants were cleared of all charges by the tribunal panel, which comprised magistrate Lucinda Barnett, Clifford Chance M&A partner Simon Tinkler, and solicitor Richard Hegarty. However, in an unprecedented break from SDT tradition, Hegarty's dissenting opinion was included in the judgment published this week. It reveals the extent to which Hegarty, a former Law Society member and senior partner of his Peterborough firm, disagreed with his colleagues.

One collection of charges related to a press conference at which Day compared the soldiers' alleged crimes to the My Lai massacre and presented photos with commentary including, "here are the two men who the certificates say had their eyes gouged out", and, "here is a man who is said to have his penis cut off". Diverging from his tribunal colleagues, Hegarty found that the press conference was "unbalanced, subjective and sensationalist", and that as a result Day had in fact diminished public trust in the profession and allowed his independence to be compromised. The judgment notes that Hegarty "did not find [Day] to be a credible, honest or convincing witness".

1 Angry Man.

Hegarty also thought Crowther was guilty. Leigh Day was lambasted in the press for its delay in disclosing the 'OMS Detainee List', a critical document in its possession which revealed that the firm's Iraqi clients were probably members of an Iraqi militia rather than innocent civilians. The firm denied that it buried the document, claiming that it simply failed to spot its importance.  When it was revealed that Crowther threw the original English translation of the Arabic document in the bin, she attracted further criticism. Including from her own firm. Day emailed Malik, "It was a real fuck up to have missed this one key document. God knows what [Crowther] was thinking when she looked at it but we will of course not hang her out to dry". In another email he wrote, "Missing the document's significance was bad enough but shredding the translation was madness".
 
The majority of the tribunal found that Crowther's mistake did not amount to negligence or incompetence. But Hegarty called her "manifestly incompetent" for a 4PQE, and stated that it was "untenable" to suggest she wasn't in breach of professional rules for "destroying an original, relevant and disclosable document".

The defendants were also charged in relation to improper payments to claimants. In one email Malik referred to a payment as a "bribe", language she told the tribunal she used because she was tired and frustrated, and to which did not attach a legal meaning. On another occasion Crowther emailed Malik, "we have to fork out bribe money for their employers (i think they call it 'work/leave payments')", to which Malik replied, "be careful about phrases you use with the investigators like 'bribe money', which may well get passed on to MoD". Another Leigh Day partner, who had received a request to make one of the payments, emailed, "I am not sure I understand the need for leave money - why would he need $600?"  Hegarty ruled that it was clear the lawyers suspected the payments were bribes, but he was overruled by his colleagues.

Meanwhile, the SRA will need to find a lot more than $600 unless it appeals the decision and wins. Its costs are estimated at £1.4 million, while Leigh Day's are approximately £7.5m.

Leigh Day declined to comment on the inclusion of Hegarty's opinion.