Scottish Solicitors' Discipline Tribunal

Yvonne Robbie

A complaint was made by the Council of the Law Society of Scotland against Yvonne Robbie, solicitor, Dundee. The Tribunal found the respondent not guilty of professional misconduct.

The complaint against the respondent contained three averments of misconduct: (1) the respondent in the knowledge that an interim order had been granted in favour of her client’s opponent in family proceedings in relation to the care and control of their child, advised her client to attend at the school of the child to collect the child in order that the said client might thereby circumvent or frustrate the order of the court; (2) the respondent in affirming in the course of a telephone conversation with the head teacher of the child’s school that there was no legal obstacle to the school handing the child over to the client, as the interim order of the court had not yet been served on that client, thereby misled the head teacher as to the nature and effect of the order of the court in a manner calculated to circumvent or frustrate it; and (3) esto the respondent was not aware of the terms of the interim order, her assertion to the head teacher as to the nature and effect of an order of the court of which she had no clear knowledge represented conduct of a reckless, inaccurate and misleading nature which would have the effect of circumventing or frustrating the order of the court. 

Having considered the evidence led at the hearing, which established that both parents had attended the school on the date in question and it had ultimately been agreed that the respondent’s client could remove the child from the school that day, the Tribunal concluded that misconduct had not been established and declined to refer the matter back to the Council of the Law Society of Scotland in terms of s 53ZA of the Solicitors (Scotland) Act 1980.