In Alastair Brett v The Solicitors Regulation Authority [2014] EWHC 2974 (Admin) the judge rules that Mr. Brett knowingly misled the courts and due to his recklessness’ granted in a 6 month suspension of his solicitors license as well as paying a fee of £30,000 to the courts. What exactly will be focused in this commentary is the controversy surrounding Mr. Brett and him breaching rule 11.01 as well as him failing to act with integrity in accordance with rule 1.02 of the Solicitors code of conduct .
The facts of the case are that Alastair Brett, a solicitor as well as a former legal manager at Times Newspaper for over 30 years had been disclosed against a decision from the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal (SDT) on the 6th of December 2013.…show more content… In 2009, he committed a technical breach of the Computer Misuse Act 1990 by hacking into the private account email of a blogger, who was known as “Nightjack” online. He unravelled the mysterious blogger whose true identity was Richard Horton (RH) a police officer part of the Lancashire Police Department. The existence of the police blogger called “Nightjack” had been revealed because of the Leveson Inquiry in 2011 which questioned the judgement of Mr…show more content… In addition, questioning how credible Times Newspaper sources were and how they actually came about to reveal Richard Horton as the blogger. As a result, Mr. Horton did not receive his injunction but it was later found out that the newspaper company gave false reasoning’s as to how they received information about Mr. Horton implying that they used legal methods to reveal his true identity. Moreover, it was soon discovered that Times Newspaper failed to advise their own barrister of the unlawful methods as well as to Mr. Horton’s lawyer which in October 2012 led to the company paying compensation to Mr. Horton.
Patrick Foster a 24 year old junior reporter at The Times Newspaper, had told Mr. Brett, that he had identified “Nightjack” as Richard Horton by gaining access to Mr. Horton’s private email account in an illegal way. It also came out of the Leveson inquiry 2011 that Patrick Foster had been given legal advice and consultations by Mr. Brett, the Times former legal manager. While all this, Mr. Brett asked a fellow Barrister whether a crime had been committed and was told that there could be a crime under the Data Protection Act with also a possible defence of public interest.
However, all in all the Judge summarised that Mr. Brett knowingly misled the courts and due to his recklessness’