Did the lawyers who sent demand letters to thousands of UK citizens over the past two years know that there was a chance they could be extorting money from innocent people?
According to recent statements made by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA), the Davenport Lyons legal team knew full well what they were doing when they sent those letters, which usually requested £500 in exchange for dropping further court proceedings.
That will be the basis of the SRA’s claims against David Gore and Brian Miller, two partners of the Davenport Lyons firm who will face the committee for a disciplinary hearing that is scheduled to take place in May 2011. The claim will also state that the two knew that IP addresses aren’t sufficient legal evidence to convict an individual of copyright infringement, since the IP address changes every time a computer is reconnected to a router and could be spoofed by hackers.
“Each of the respondents knew that in conducting generic campaigns against those identified as IP holders whose IP numeric had been used for downloading or uploading of material that they might in such generic campaigns be targeting people innocent of any copyright breach,” the SRA’s statement says.
After reviewing correspondence by Davenport Lyons staff during the time period the demand letters were sent, the SRA also alleged that Miller and Gore were in violation of the Solicitors Code of Conduct because they did not take into account the negative effects their actions could have on client’s reputations.
In reference to a message the SRA stated, “This letter indicates that the respondents were approaching the enterprise as their own… The reference to ‘revenue share’ indicates that the respondents were regarding the scheme which they were operating as a revenue generating scheme.” In more basic terms, Davenport Lyons was more interested in making money for themselves rather than providing fair representation for their clients.
While those of us watching these cases from the outside have been saying all along that the lawyers in charge of the cases were fueled by greed rather than justice, it’s great to see an official oversight committee come to the same conclusions. We expect to see more of the same as the SRA’s case against Andrew Crossley of ACS:Law progresses.
