Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal and SRA Failing to Curb SLAPPs Against People Who Expose Wrongdoing
2023 (a few months before the same lawyer sent threatening letters to my wife and I):
Hours ago: (a different law firm, but same recipient)
The solicitor whose tribunal conviction over a 'without prejudice' email was overturned on appeal last month has been granted a costs order against the Solicitors Regulation Authority, court papers have revealed. In a consent order dated 5 February, Mrs Justice Collins Rice required the regulator to make an interim payment of £400,000.
Media lawyer Ashley Hurst was fined £50,000 in 2024 when the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal found that he had improperly attempted to stop solicitor and tax commentator Dan Neidle from publishing or discussing correspondence over the tax affairs of his client, former chancellor of the exchequer Nadhim Zahawi. The SDT also ordered Hurst to pay £260,000 costs.
[...]
The ruling is the second adverse costs ruling this month against the SRA over a SLAPP prosecution. The Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal last week ordered the regulator to pay the costs of Carter-Ruck partner Claire Gill following the summary dismissal of the SRA's case.
We'll soon show how the SRA ducked the 'without prejudice' E-mail sent on behalf of a serial strangler from Microsoft (who has since then, in effect, abandoned his case because I sued him last summer). The SRA's assumption was proven wrong in a courtroom; the serial strangler from Microsoft did in fact coordinate his lawsuit with Matthew J. Garrett, according to Matthew J. Garrett.
SRA is in the "hot seat" again. It's not doing its job. It fails to properly regulate.
We'll soon start a new series about how SRA staff (mis)handled a notorious firm with "kids' gloves" and ended up making a decision without even examining the evidence because their Microsoft systems failed almost 10 times in succession. They tried for about 3 months - and failed every times - to receive files. IT 101!
Nowadays the law firm that targets me has almost no "media" (litigation) business, no blog posts, no activity in social control media (in almost two weeks already). Many staff members are leaving and they recently got sued by their own clients [1, 2, 3]. That lawsuit against them still goes ahead, according to public records. Earlier this week it issued new kinds of threats (threatening to put us in prison; yes, my wife also!) and a day later (also the same day) I received threats from a burner account apparently connected to the firm. They just try to frighten us.
The state of media law in the UK is becoming really sordid. The hired guns are stopped by nobody and their real objectives are reputation laundering by lawfare. Bellingcat's founder spoke about it last year. Some quotes: "The fact remains that to any reasonable person, an individual sanctioned by the UK, EU, and US government for their relationship with Wagner claiming social media posts making the same statement would damage their reputation and taking legal action against the individual sharing that information is a clear abuse of the British legal system. I have no confidence in a system that would allow such a thing to happen, especially when neither the government nor SRA seem to want to take responsibility for preventing something similar happening in the future."
The UK Anti-SLAPP Coalition (that I spoke to many times over E-mail and telephone) said: "...decision to discontinue Eliot’s complaint and the absence, until now, of any explanation has sowed further confusion and doubt in a manner that threatens to undermine public trust in the SRA and its work. While we disagree with its decision to discontinue Eliot’s complaint against Discreet Law, we agree with the SRA that regulation on its own is not enough to stamp out SLAPPs and that a universal anti-SLAPP Law is what everyone needs.”
When will that happen? We'll soon show messages that we transmitted to politicians. █