Bonum Certa Men Certa

Pressing Against SLAPPs (From Americans Who Strangle Women While Microsoft Pays Their Salaries) is a High Priority for Us

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Apr 10, 2025

William Barr, who will eventually be disbarred: I don't always misuse my licence to SLAPP. When I do, it'll be for people from another country.

We also need to ensure that greedy firms/people that facilitate (and profit from) the SLAPPs get "disbarred" or "struck off" [1, 2]

Yesterday we said that the "UK House of Lords Recognises the SLAPP Issue in the UK" and added that we shall pursue a role in reform, for a whole plethora of reasons as exemplified moments ago in the sister site. In a sense, we might even gain "free publicity" from all this, not that it would be unprecedented.

There is plenty of potential here for future journalism regarding SLAPPs and many facets to be explored, including the regulation of the litigation industry. Yes, industry.

2 years ago we looked at the pension industry and made many calls. It's not over yet. A colleague filed a case against Sirius Open Source and it's still ongoing.

With "Action Fraud UK" we reported (multiple victims at Sirius) obvious fraud, confirmed by the large pension firm, but without examining the evidence "Action Fraud UK" just said it would not deal with it. Upon escalation to the MP, a respected politician/authority which in turn contacted them, they simple totally ignored her. We'll see if SRA is the same. We hope not. They must maintain standards, otherwise suspicion will grow that there is regulatory capture. See this article from January.

After concerns were raised about the solicitor’s handling of the first matter, the firm asked the solicitor to resign from the partnership. Three separate claims were later brought against the firm. One former client said the solicitor’s actions resulted in family animosity, stress and the breakdown of her marriage that had “destroyed her life”. The firm has since had to close, primarily because of higher professional indemnity insurance (PII) premiums.

The UK Anti-SLAPP Coalition is highly critical of the decision by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) to close the complaint brought by Bellingcat founder Eliot Higgins against Discreet Law, the firm that represented Russian warlord Yevgeny Prigozhin, without any further action.

Source: UK Anti-SLAPP Coalition criticises the SRA’s closure of Higgins’ SLAPP complaint and points to need for universal SLAPP protections

The decision to close the complaint appears to go against the SRA’s guidance – both the ‘Warning Notice on SLAPPs’, first published in 2022 and updated in 2024, as well as the 2018 ‘Balancing duties in litigation,’ which explicitly states a lawyer’s role is not to be a ‘gun for hire’. While there are understood to have been over 70 cases into SLAPPs opened by the regulator, progress to investigate complaints has been slow, with only two cases thus far known to have been referred to the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal (SDT). Many targets of SLAPPs, the Coalition have spoken to, have raised concerns regarding the time taken by the regulator when investigating their cases, with a number reluctant to update their cases due to these delays and the lack of necessary communication or updates.

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