Coll v Floreat Merchant Banking Ltd and others [2014] EWHC 1741 (QB), [2014] All ER (D) 30 (Jun)
The court's jurisdiction over solicitors was conceptually very wide, being curtailed only to the extent that legislation limited it. The court had, in practice, imposed boundaries on the exercise of its own jurisdiction. The jurisdiction had both punitive and compensatory elements. However, given that solicitors were the subject of a comprehensive and sophisticated regulatory regime through the SRA, the jurisdiction would only usually be exercised where someone had lost out as a result of the solicitor’s conduct and the court was the appropriate forum to require that loss to be put right on a summary basis. The jurisdiction was therefore primarily compensatory, although in a disciplinary context.
However, while misconduct was necessary, simply because there had been misconduct was not sufficient for the jurisdiction to be exercised. Whether the court intervened in a particular case was always a matter for the court’s discretion. Where another forum was more appropriate than the court for the investigation of misconduct by a solicitor and the subsequent imposition of a sanction, then the court
