Suspension enough, says High Court
A top barrister disbarred for lying about attending Oxford University during a tenancy interview more than a decade ago has had that decision overturned.
Anurag Mohindru KC was called to the bar in 2004 and took silk in 2020, and was disbarred following the discovery that he had lied to an interview panel.
According to the judgment, during an interview with chambers in 2013, Mohindru was asked whether he had represented Oxford in cricket and he said yes. After his CV was requested by the panel to confirm whether he had attended the university, he edited it to state that he had studied medicine at Oxford for a year, which he had not done.
However, he subsequently withdrew his application from the set and went on to build a career as a barrister at a different chambers.
The lie surfaced after an anonymous complaint was submitted to the Bar Standards Board (BSB) over eight and a half years later, following his elevation to KC. Following the complaint, he was put before a BSB disciplinary tribunal, where he denied all allegations. The tribunal found one of the allegations to be true.
The BSB decided despite “the passage of time and the completely exemplary conduct of his professional career since these matters occurred” that this conduct was grounds for disbarment. He was subsequently disbarred and ordered to pay £54,780 costs.
Mohindru later appealed the decision to the High Court on grounds of sanction and costs. The costs were reduced to £36,155 and during the appeal, Mr Justice Johnson found that the tribunal had applied too rigid a test, wrongly requiring exceptional circumstances to relate to the dishonesty itself rather than to personal mitigation.
Both the “antiquity of the dishonesty” and Mohindru’s unblemished professional record since meant that the could be “regarded as an isolated incident”.
The judge also noted that since Mohindru had withdrawn his application, he had not gained anything materially from lying about his university attendance or harmed anyone in the process. “Of course, he should not have lied,” the judge said. ‘But it is far from the most egregious dishonesty.”
Mr Justice Johnson concluded that disbarment was not the only sanction properly open to the tribunal. He found that the suspension imposed since the tribunal’s ruling eight and a half months earlier amounted to a “sufficient sanction,” so he is now free to return to practice.
