A Christian barrister has been struck off and ordered to pay more than £40,000 after he called “biblical curses” at a barrister following a conflict over a client’s will.
Solicitor Alvin Just sent “inappropriate and unprofessional” emails to solicitor Philip Noble after the pair fell out over a will dispute at Central London County Court in 2017.
He said in a message to Mr Noble: “You are just fading one step closer to your grave… I will not lose sleep over your nonsense as I know the plagues will fall on you like Pharaoh…
“You remind me of a 7th grade bully that I had to beat to the ground.”
He also sent messages to Mr Noble’s client, including: “Your judgment is coming soon, watch out, and it won’t be easy, the Most High knows it… Just remember whoever digs a pit will fall into it.”
Mr Just, 51, a partner at London-based Just & Brown Solicitors, faced a disciplinary tribunal in 2022 after Mr Noble raised concerns with the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) about emails sent to him.
In ruling to disbar him earlier in February, the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal said: “Even in an adversarial trial, members of the public would expect solicitors to be firm but restrained in the language they used when communicating with the other side .
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“That expectation was even greater when those communications were with the average customer.”
The court also heard allegations about Mr Just’s handling of a case involving a will and his response to the SRA’s investigation into him.
The Tottenham-based solicitor failed to ensure a client’s money was kept in a separate “client account”, it found.
Mr Just then refused to co-operate with the subsequent investigation by the SRA.
The tribunal found that during the investigation he “deliberately withheld information and misled the SRA on a number of material matters”.
He added: “The court found that ordinary and decent people would consider a lawyer who had knowingly and deliberately lied and misled his regulator during an inquiry into his conduct to have acted dishonestly.”
Mr Just argued in his defense that Mr Noble had a “serious vendetta” against him and therefore did not accept his comments were “inappropriate”.
He claimed that quoting passages from the Bible was not a breach of his duties.
The court found that Mr Just’s comments had been made in the context of “extremely hostile litigation” but that he expressed his “frustration and annoyance” with the lawyer “in a way that was not appropriate”.
However, he did not find the comments “offensive or threatening”.
“By communicating in the way he did, Mr Just failed to maintain the public’s trust in him,” it said.
The tribunal concluded that Mr Just should be struck off the Roll of Solicitors and was ordered to pay costs of £41,896.20.
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