… don’t hire the indus­trial size JCB dig­ger with the “Extra Fast, Extra Deep Hole Dig­ger” attach­ment and then spend the rest of the night bur­row­ing towards Aus­tralia as fast as you can.

Geeklawyer’s day has been livened by a report in the Daily Tory­graph of enter­tain­ing lit­i­ga­tion.

The reports relate to a cer­tain bar­ris­ter, who we shall refer to by the pseu­do­nym of “Marc Beau­mont” of an imag­i­nary set of cham­bers called Wind­sor Cham­bers. Mark is some­thing of a high flyer within the Bar. We know this because he tells us, repeat­edly and in great detail:

“He has con­sid­er­able lit­i­ga­tion and advo­cacy expe­ri­ence… He has appeared in courts at every level of the jus­tice sys­tem, includ­ing the Court of Appeal and the House of Lords.

In Court, Marc is orig­i­nal, thor­ough and tenacious.

Marc enjoys a high pro­file within the pro­fes­sion. He set up his own Cham­bers … believes that Bar­ris­ter ser­vices can and should be pro­vided from styl­ish and his­toric loca­tions out­side of Lon­don. Wind­sor Cham­bers is a prod­uct of those beliefs.

Marc is an elected mem­ber of the Bar Coun­cil … Marc is a pow­er­ful “back-bench” speaker at Bar Coun­cil meet­ings … speak­ing up for the rank-and-file and often ignor­ing the risk of per­sonal unpop­u­lar­ity … His speeches are pithy and pow­er­ful, but always ele­gant and polite. Rad­i­cal thought is the more cogent for being deliv­ered with good manners.

Marc has been a force for fun­da­men­tal change … he single-handedly con­ceived, advo­cated … the new scheme of direct pub­lic access to the Bar. In May 2007, he single-handedly founded the Pub­lic Access Bar Association.

He was also the archi­tect of BCAS, the dis­ci­pli­nary and advi­sory ser­vice for Bar­ris­ters. He then devel­oped BCAS still fur­ther, by [blah blah] At first, these fresh ideas met with fierce oppo­si­tion. Yet all are now a pop­u­lar and per­ma­nent fea­ture of life at the Eng­lish Bar.”

It would, of course, be some­what hyp­o­crit­i­cal for Geeklawyer to mock another barrister’s choice of the third per­son if, as one assumes, Marc has writ­ten this lau­da­tion him­self. Mark can, we can safely say, walk on water, heal the lame and raise the dead: this Samson-like fig­ure has single-handedly hefted the bur­dens of the mod­ern Bar on his broad manly shoul­ders. We owe our liv­ing to this beau­ti­ful man.

How can such a god-like fig­ure be brought low?

Delilah.

Mr Beau­mont is being sued by a lady solic­i­tor: Anal Sheikh. Geeklawyer is a great fan of Ms Sheik’s videos “Anal Shake 1 and 2″, although, to be hon­est, the fran­chise became a bit weak from episode 3 onwards. The details of the lit­i­ga­tion are the sort of rou­tine grubby stuff that we all love about fam­ily law, espe­cially when it involves pro­fes­sional men and women behav­ing badly.

Barrister Marc Beaumont

Marc, Geeklawyer feels almost on first name terms with him, is a man mar­ried to a long suf­fer­ing lady named Michele; ‘Michele Beau­mont’ one pre­sumes, if the details Marc has pro­vided on his web­site are accu­rate. Mark is a senior bar­ris­ter and Geeklawyer pauses the nar­ra­tive briefly to won­der quite what a “senior” bar­ris­ter is and where this species of bar­ris­ter fits within the genus lawyer and species bar­ris­ter (pupil, squat­ter, junior, lead­ing junior, QC etc. etc.)

Any­way, let us remain on topic.

Marc’s sin was, accord­ing to reports of the lit­i­ga­tion, to dip his toes a lit­tle too deeply into his instruct­ing solicitor’s pad­dling pool. Yet again Geeklawyer, to evade accu­sa­tions of hypocrisy, can­not and will not crit­i­cise that, since he has banged Ruthie (even though she was never dim enough to instruct him). Nonethe­less Anal is suing Marc for £800,000. The most enter­tain­ing of the grounds is that he billed her £250/hour for ‘urgent’ work. The alle­ga­tion is, appar­ently, that some of the time that he spent shag­ging her was billed under this con­trac­tual term.

Again, Geeklawyer is a mas­ter lover and never breaks a sweat; less expe­ri­enced and com­pe­tent lovers such as Marc may indeed need to act urgently so as to bring the client ‘con­fer­ence’ to an early cli­max. On that basis one would say that the  £250/hour was fairly and rea­son­ably incurred.

Accord­ing to the reported lit­i­ga­tion claim the Anal Mis­tress now claims that Marc billed her for time when they were merely play­ing “Hide the Sausage” includ­ing a bill for £2,350 when lit­tle or no client work was done.

For his part Marc denies all of this and any alle­ga­tions of impro­pri­ety. He claims that at all times he behaved: “with pro­fes­sional objec­tiv­ity and total com­mit­ment, as I always try to do. I was enti­tled to charge fees for my pro­fes­sional time and did so, which Miss Sheikh agreed.”

One can never tell who is the bounder from such reports and one sus­pects, in fair­ness to Marc, that Miss Anal may be a bit of a Bunny Boiler (she is fac­ing a Solic­i­tors Dis­ci­pli­nary Tri­bunal hear­ing over alle­ga­tions of dishonesty):

“She has been demand­ing the repay­ment of pro­fes­sional fees from me for the last six months with increas­ingly unpleas­ant and extreme allegations.

He alleged that Miss Sheikh, from Stan­more, Lon­don, has brought com­plaints against five other bar­ris­ters and four firms of solic­i­tors, adding:

“She is a wag­ing a pri­vate war against many other senior lawyers apart from me.”

Marc also says:

“I have never charged her for time spent social­is­ing. That is a vicious slur.”

Marc says: “My wife is a beau­ti­ful, decent and remark­able per­son, whom I love with all my heart.” Yea, but if these reports are true you didn’t love her enough with all of your cock.

So far so funny. But at this point this shit hits the email.

John Bolch, Mr. Nice Guy of the legal blog­ging world, com­ments on one of these bazil­lion news reports going around the world (Fark for fuck sake!). He does no more than point to the Tory­graph report, plus Marc Beaumont’s own web­page and he sud­denly gets a threat­en­ing let­ter from Beaumont:

“Please imme­di­ately remove ref­er­ence to me on your web­site as well as my pho­to­graph and the link to my website”

Granted that despite Marc Beau­mont appear­ing to have nei­ther a brain nor a PR agent it should nonethe­less be appar­ent that Bolch is doing no more than rea­son­ably point­ing to a well pub­li­cised Story of the Day. Whether Marc regards Bolch’s site as such an opin­ion for­mer it needs to be crushed over and above Fark and The Tory­graph is unclear but it looks like spine­less bul­ly­ing. John Bolch’s site does no prac­ti­cal dam­age to Beau­mont and noth­ing unlawful.

One hopes that even if Marc Beau­mont does win his case against his Anal lover he will attract the oppro­brium deserved for this con­duct. Mr Beau­mont should remem­ber the adage “rep­u­ta­tions are hard won and eas­ily lost”.

So then, Marc Beau­mont is a com­mer­cial bar­ris­ter. Here is an IP/IT/defamation barrister’s sum­mary view of UK law relat­ing to the most obvi­ous issues com­plained of, or implic­itly com­plained of, in Marc’s complaint:

1) Pri­vacy:

There is no right for one to demand of oth­ers that they do not refer to you. Data Pro­tec­tion laws would be inap­plic­a­ble since the world has used freely avail­able infor­ma­tion that Beau­mont has pro­vided or which is law­fully available.

Cur­rently devel­oped pri­vacy law would be inap­plic­a­ble since the mate­r­ial used to mock Beau­mont is mate­r­ial he has vol­un­tar­ily pro­vided to the world, includ­ing the name of his wife. This infor­ma­tion has been pro­vided by him for his own advance­ment and is sub­ject to no con­trac­tual or law­ful restraints; fur­ther, it is the sub­ject of legal pro­ceed­ings and the report­ing rights attach­ing thereto.

2) Defama­tion.

This Report together with that of John Bolch’s and the Torygraph’s are sub­ject to the defence of absolute, or at worst qual­i­fied priv­i­lege, of the report­ing of judi­cial proceedings.

The report­ing has, addi­tion­ally, the defence of ‘fair com­ment’.

3) Copy­right

Beau­mont  does not, one assumes, pos­sess copy­right in the pho­to­graph used in the Tory­graph, Bolch or Geeklawyer reports. As such Beau­mont may not con­strain its use: the author might. Equally Beaumont’s reported remarks are sub­ject to the CDPA 1988 defences in rela­tion to copy­ing for the pur­poses of judi­cial pro­ceed­ings, or are per­haps de min­imis. Addi­tional defences and objec­tions apply.

4) Link­ing

If Beau­mont dis­likes peo­ple refer­ring to his web­site he is at lib­erty to remove it. If the web­site is freely avail­able there is a right to link to it. There are no click wrap licenses or imped­i­ments to access­ing its con­tent. How­ever, none of these points are yet decided in Eng­lish law: a test case would be most welcome.

5) Pro­fes­sional misconduct

Any­one seek­ing to use base­less, bul­ly­ing, dis­pro­por­tion­ate and dis­crim­i­na­tory threats against a fel­low lawyer, while fail­ing to threaten either Fark or a national news­pa­per because both are bet­ter funded and able to defend them­selves, will be at risk of a com­plaint of unpro­fes­sional behav­iour in breach of the Bar’s ethics and dis­ci­pli­nary rules as well as Human Rights Law in rela­tion to free expres­sion. Any ‘senior’ bar­ris­ter with a found­ing role in Bar dis­ci­pli­nary mat­ters would know this. These abuses may, and indeed in anal­o­gous mat­ters in the past have, led to dis­bar­ment of barristers.

Beau­mont may dis­agree; Geeklawyer is equipped to lit­i­gate the mat­ter if need be: he will accept ser­vice of process by email at the address geeklawyer [at] geeklawyer dot org should Marc choose to put his house & assets where his mouth is. Beau­mont is all wind and bull­shit but an appli­ca­tion for sum­mary judg­ment, with imme­di­ately payable costs, would one sus­pects set­tle the matter.

Here is a “pithy and pow­er­ful” remark “deliv­ered with good man­ners”: Marc, STFU.

PS:

Michele: John Bolch is one of the best kind­est and most gen­tle fam­ily lawyers in the UK. Be like Marc, email John Bolsch; he can advise you on your best divorce options.

Update:
The fol­low­ing text appears in a com­ment below and if the author is who he claims to be then the mat­ter appears, bar­ring appeals, to have been resolved. I am, at the moment, unable to find any ver­i­fy­ing report of the verdict.

The claim made by Miss Anal Sheikh against Mr Marc Beau­mont has now been deter­mined by Mr Jus­tice Simon in the High Court. In all, it con­tained some 19 alle­ga­tions. On 25th June 2009, all claims against Mr Beau­mont were either struck out or he was awarded sum­mary judg­ment. He was awarded the costs of the action, includ­ing a pay­ment on account of £ 50,000, payable within 14 days. Sev­eral appli­ca­tions made by Miss Anal Sheikh were deemed by the Judge to have been “totally with­out merit.”

Com­menter says also:
“On 5th May 2009, Miss Anal Sheikh was struck off the roll of solic­i­tors by the Solic­i­tors Dis­ci­pli­nary Tri­bunal, hav­ing been found to have acted dis­hon­estly in the con­duct of her prac­tice.” But this doesn’t tally with this (pdf link) deci­sion date May 2008 of the Solic­i­tors Reg­u­la­tory Author­ity which says:

with imme­di­ate effect Miss Sheikh may act as a solic­i­tor only
in employ­ment which has first been approved by the Solic­i­tors
Reg­u­la­tion Author­ity; she is not per­mit­ted to be a mem­ber,
office holder or share­owner of an incor­po­rated solic­i­tors
prac­tice, or a sole prin­ci­pal, part­ner or salaried part­ner of any
solic­i­tors prac­tice; she is to imme­di­ately inform any actual or
prospec­tive employer of these con­di­tions and the rea­sons for
their imposition;she does not han­dle or have any respon­si­bil­ity
for clients’ money and is not respon­si­ble for com­plaints
han­dling; she is not respon­si­ble for any staff; she shall not be
appointed as an execu­tor, trustee, or per­sonal rep­re­sen­ta­tive
in rela­tion to any mat­ter involv­ing the admin­is­tra­tion of
estates, includ­ing Will Trusts (other than on behalf of a
mem­ber of her own fam­ily); within 3 months she attends a
CPD course on Money Laundering.

This is a May 2008 deci­sion, and I am assum­ing there are not two Anal Sheiks, and it may be the com­menter has infor­ma­tion on a newer SRA decision.