Negative Trustpilot review of law firm Summerfield Browne cost aggrieved Briton £28k
- Reference: 1611227829
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2021/01/21/trustpilot_review_libel_28k/
- Source link:
Philip Waymouth not only libelled his former solicitors after receiving what he felt to be unsatisfactory legal advice but also didn't get legal representation to defend the libel lawsuit, as the High Court recounted [1]in a judgment this week .
[2]
"The Defendant was involved in a dispute concerning the enforcement of a court order," explained Master David Cook, the judge in the case. "He sought out the Claimant after an internet search, signed their standard terms and conditions after which the Defendant gave him advice for a fixed fee of £200. It seems that for some reason, which he has never fully articulated, the Defendant was dissatisfied with the advice he was given."
After receiving the legal advice from Summerfield Browne Ltd, Waymouth was not a happy bunny – and made his feelings known via this Trustpilot review:
[3]
A total waste of money another scam solicitor
Stacey mills left the company half way through my assessment and the replacement was useless. I paid upfront for a legal assessment of my case, but what I got was just the information I sent them, reworded and sent back to me. No new information or how to proceed or what the law says or indeed the implications of what was done. I Just got their false assumptions, full of errors showing a lack of understanding for the situation and the law. Once they have your money they are totally apathetic towards you. You will learn more from forums, you tube and the Citizens advice website about your case, for free
Unsurprisingly, Summerfield Browne sued Waymouth for £25,000. More surprising was that the man did not retain any lawyers to fight the case for him, instead telling the High Court by email:
This entire situation is of their own creation, they deceived me into believing they would provide an assessment to the value of £200 +vat, they did not provide anything of value - its a dictionary definition of the word Scam. Summerfield Browne made no attempt to negotiate out of court and refused to respond to my offers on three occasions. They refused to discuss my pre court offer of withdrawing my opinion should they refund my £200 +vat. They are suing for personal gain… Going through litigation is just another attempt at getting more money from me without giving anything of service in return and all the hallmarks of a scam solicitor.
Master Cook ruled that Waymouth was not entitled to defend himself on the basis of having posted his honest opinion on Trustpilot, citing a 2016 High Court case where a judge ruled that calling someone dishonest, in libel law, "will usually fall fairly and squarely on the side of fact rather than opinion" regardless of what is actually said.
A safeguard exists in libel law called serious harm . If you are accused of libelling somebody, you can argue that your statement didn't cause them serious harm and so isn't actionable. Courts, however, set the bar very low for companies claiming they had been libelled. For a company, "serious harm" merely means suffering a financial loss, however small.
Solicitor Tessa Rhodes told the court that the number of enquiries Summerfield Browne received fell from "50 to 60 per week to 30 to 40 per week" in the five weeks after Waymouth posted on Trustpilot.
"I conclude that a substantial number of potential clients were put off and that there has therefore been a financially damaging impact for a period of at least three to four months," said the judge, adding: "I am not in a position on the basis of the evidence before me to be any more precise and I do not think that any deeper or wider enquiry into the financial loss caused by the Defendant would be proportionate given the cap on damages sought."
The financial damages sought were £25,000 plus £12,600 in so-called "special damages".
Summerfield Browne's barrister, SJ Bradshaw, compared Waymouth's Trustpilot review with how [4]right-wing personality Katie Hopkins libelled cook Jack Monroe in 2017 in a series of Twitter posts. Hopkins falsely accused Monroe of supporting vandals who desecrated the Cenotaph war memorial, having mixed her up with a Guardian columnist.
"In my judgment it is beyond any dispute that the words complained of had a clear tendency to put people off dealing with the Claimant firm," thundered Master Cook. "It is a serious matter to accuse a solicitors firm of dishonesty and any such allegation is likely to deter those who are unfamiliar with the firm from using its services."
Master Cook ordered Waymouth to pay Summerfield Browne £25,000 in damages and rejected its claim for special damages. He did, however, order Waymouth to pay a further £3,450 in legal costs.
In part, Waymouth lost because he didn't turn up to the trial and didn't engage meaningfully with the legal process or, seemingly, get proper legal advice. Had he done so, the outcome may not have been as clear-cut.
[5]
Trustpilot was ordered by the court to delete Waymouth's post, in accordance with [6]section 13 of the Defamation Act 2013 . ®
Get our [7]Tech Resources
[1] https://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/QB/2021/85.html
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_bootnotes/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2YAmzLOewZPT0lWB7qL6xbgAAAIY&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_bootnotes/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33YAmzLOewZPT0lWB7qL6xbgAAAIY&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[4] https://inews.co.uk/news/katie-hopkins-jack-monroe-libel-case-bankruptcy-individual-voluntary-arrangement-198372
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_bootnotes/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YAmzLOewZPT0lWB7qL6xbgAAAIY&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[6] https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2013/26/section/13/enacted
[7] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: If you're going to represent yourself...
Oh yes, not turning up is an instant lose with the beak having no real reason to disallow the damages asked because it's not their job to argue the numbers, that's what a legal defence does.
Re: If you're going to represent yourself...
"The man who defends himself in court has a fool for a lawyer and a jackass for a client"
The man who seeks Summerfield Browne for advice has a bunch of fools...
...a bunch of fools and jackasses as advisers.
FTFY
Re: The man who seeks Summerfield Browne for advice has a bunch of fools...
“Allegedly”
Factually!
Have you checked their trustpilot page? The reviews there leave no room for doubt, utter carnage!
Re: If you're going to represent yourself...
I like the similar line from the Adams Family on this
They say that a man who represents himself in court has a fool for a client. Well with God as my witness.......I am that fool!
[1]https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nF-SR2UwGQ8
[1] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nF-SR2UwGQ8
Re: If you're going to represent yourself...
Even more so if you don't even turn up.
New review:
Solicitor sued me for £25k after I wrote a review expressing my dissatisfaction with their service.
100% factual and non-libellous and it'll likely have an even greater detrimental effect on their bookings.
If you try that, I predict a repeat sueball for the implied accusations
>>after I wrote a review expressing my...
More correctly "after I libelled them whilst expressing my..." as established by the outcome of the case..
>>It'll likely have an even greater detrimental effect on their bookings
Indeed.. and open Mr Waymouth to a potential claim for damages. As Hizonnor said "He is a litigant who tends to shoot wildly from the hip.." - in this case, IMHO, he should retreat from the fray!
Mr Waymouth would do well to take a few deep breaths and count to, i dunno, lets say, Graham's Number before taking any action he may later regret!
Edit: spelling
Well funnily enough, there is a 1 star review that goes along those lines, albeit that they are suing rather than they won. It also contains the post that they originally sued over and was taken down :)
One Star Review
The problem with any review system is that - like or or not - there walks among us a group of people who cannot look at a five-star rating without being overcome with the desire to be contrarian and 'fix' it.
It happens on Google, Amazon, and yes, TrustPilot.
I'm not for a moment suggesting Mr Waymouth was one of those, but the times we live in do seem to prompt people to apply Facebook and Twitter language to situations which are intended to be more mature and specifically useful.
In the past, I have gone out of my way to review excellent service on TrustPilot, even to the extent of creating a new company 'profile' (which isn't shady at all) and informing the owners. But I do cringe when I see someone say they got 'excellent service' and only award three or four stars. Or worse, award one star with either no explanation, or as a result of a postage issue which the company clearly resolved anyway.
It's the same on Amazon. Something arrives broken, is readily refunded or replaced, and the reviewer gives it one star - which has no relevance whatsoever to the product.
I am not judging Mr Waymouth or the solicitor in question either way. It's just that speaking personally, I always find a way forward to resolve issues so I am at least not as dissatisfied as I might have been if I'd just given up at the first hurdle. A lot of Amazon users really do appear to accept broken deliveries, and just take the hit to their pocket.
A friend at a party showed me a website where the whole point of the site was to slag off your or any solicitors. It was a long time ago and I sadly can't remember the site name. She said I could look her up on there and find a review. Somebody who had lost a case against her client had left a very defamatory review of her. She said both the website and the reviewer had left themselves open to being sued. The reviewer had left enough info to positively identify them and the case. The legal/trade body representing solicitors was aware and preparing to take action against the site. I believe the site no longer exists.
Yeah, I don't think this legal firm has taken on what the consequences might be of the negative publicity something like this could cause them. They would have been much better to offer the guy his £200 back and asked him to remove his review as although they have come out £28k better off, they might find it costs them much more than that from the negative publicity.
I sure wouldn't want to have dealings with them, not if there is an alternative. *shrug*
Reputation is a thing in the legal profession, lawyers will nearly always pull out the big guns if you call them scammers in print.
Edit: Remember, They're defending a perfect reputation until you can prove otherwise in court.
I'm going through a house sale right now, and have some sympathy with the guy and his assessment of a solicitor just going through the motions. It is very frustrating to have them act purely as a middle man, offering no help or guidance. They still cannot find the definitive land registration documents, they just want me to sign off on something that "sort of" matches - nope, go do the work. On a question regarding planning permission, they seemed to have no idea about the timescales for consent and simply cut and pasted the research I had done on the internet into their legal reply. They added a singe sentence at the end, but that was 100% wrong, and I had to correct it.
I understand his frustration, but I would be wary about making public accusations against solicitors. Not sure what the internal etiquette is for engaging a solicitor to fight another in such a direct manner. But choosing to represent yourself, and then not turning up is doomed to failure.
> act purely as a middle man, offering no help or guidance
It's unfortunately a money grubbing profession: They deal in mere words, and while normally those words would have to be carefully researched, many/most of the time they don't bother, assuming their client won't know the difference anyway. Cut & paste was specifically invented for them.
Now this might sound harsh, but the number of people I know who has been let down by their solicitors is stunning. Thinking about it, I don't know anyone who can claim his solicitors made any effort worth mentioning for the money. I do know one case though where the solicitor actively worked for the opposite party, while still taking your money...
Conveyancing
Unless you are dealing with a very small outfit, the conveyancing work is done by non-solicitors (Legal Technicians?).
They have a pile of stuff to work through and once they have responded (i.e. not necessarily answered) to a query then it goes to the bottom of the pile until they have worked through everything else.
You are normally much better dealing with a smaller outfit for house purchases but usually Banks etc. seem to want to use their tame conveyancers rather than your own choice. This means that they screw the costs down, and the service quality declines - which is not what you want with legal services!
I have experienced this myself, with having to send the same paperwork through 3 times to whoever HSBC's chosen conveyancers were on a house purchase, and the same questions being asked again and again. Even to the extent that the purchase almost fell through because of the delays that this introduced....
If I had been able to use my local firm of solicitors then everything would have proceeded smoothly and competently as it had in the past.
New Business
@MrBanana: my experience too. I bought my house with no chain and no other problems and if I hadn't phoned the solicitor every day the sale would have taken weeks longer than it did. She kept apologising about how busy they were, but when I booked an appointment under a different name to talk about drawing up a letting agreement she had plenty of time available and was most surprised when I turned up to find out why my sale was taking so long. I think that, like most solicitors, the practice was more focused on winning new business than executing what they had.
For me, the equivalent would be to bring your computer to PC World and expecting a highly trained engineer with years of experience to immediately fix your issue. What you might get is a part time teenager on minimum wage who uses google to try to work out what is happening.
The only difference is that solicitors have a much higher starting fee, meaning you think should be getting much more for your money.
Fixed fee vs hourly rate
Recently I've had to deal with two lawyers on different matters.
The conveyancing solicitor was on a fixed fee and was an absolute nightmare throughout and I still didn't have confirmation of the purchase until I got a call at 09:15 on the day of the move to say they were sorry but they'd forgotten to tell me everything had gone through.
The other solicitor was charging by the hour. She was really good and kept me well informed throughout the process.
I guess it just goes to show you get what you pay for. If you want the conveyancing solicitor to care about your purchase then pay them by the hour.
Avoid challenging "experts"
He tried to challenge lawyers.....hmm.. I think I know where I'd place my bet.
Having said that I sympathise with him and can feel his frustration with being charged a load of money for what seems like very little. I once visited a recommended BUPA back specialist for 20 minutes who charged me £400 to say it was just wear and tear (my back eventually got better over a number of years - mostly from not sitting for too long and moving about more)
Re: Avoid challenging "experts"
I am sure that solicitors/doctors/etc. have similar stories about costly IT fixes though...
It's not tapping the box that costs, it's knowing where/how to tap.
Re: Avoid challenging "experts"
How can they?
We're all honest in IT. Making the animations in Windows shorter does make your machine faster.
What? You calling me a liar?
Re: Avoid challenging "experts"
"I once visited a recommended BUPA back specialist for 20 minutes who charged me £400 to say it was just wear and tear (my back eventually got better over a number of years - mostly from not sitting for too long and moving about more)"
So he was right then, and you're complaining about the expert assessment that said so? This is the flip side, people who pay to see an expert then don't value the advice given. If he'd noticed anything worse with your back then he'd have said so and presumably you'd be even more financially worse off. What did you want him to do, send you for more expensive tests to make it seem like he'd given you more?
Now where's that joke about the expert knowing where to chalk an x on a piece of machinery...
The legal mafia ...
look after their own.
There are plenty of crap solicitors around. Some act so as to increase what they charge you. Others do not seem to know what they are doing, eg when buying a house nothing happens and both sides blame the other for the delay.
There are also some good ones. It is hard to tell the difference until you have been through the case.
Re: The legal mafia ...
"look after their own"
Unfortunately it is not just the legal profession - most professions (mine included) seem to close ranks when somethings goes "bad-PR" - I think the legal profession are probably the most proficient at it as they are good at understanding/interpreting/bending "rules"
Sad but probably a fact of life.
Occasionally a professional will put their head above the parapet and actually admit they did something which was not their best work and I applaud that.
Oh! Look! The legal profession sided with the legal profession. I am shocked!
Out of interest, if the legal profession attacked itself would we have a matter / anti-matter situation?
re: The legal profession sided with the legal profession.
That's what you took from that? Not "Idiot libels law firm then doesn't turn up to defend himself in court"?
Difficult for the judge to side with him if he can't be arsed to turn up.
Has this legal firm never heard of the Streisand effect?
Unless they also get a court order to delere any news about this judgment, anyone looking for this firm online will know they went to court just because a bad review online.
Re: Has this legal firm never heard of the Streisand effect?
I was thinking the same - and would naturally steer well clear of Summerfield Browne Ltd now, even if Waymouth was wrong.
Having looked at their website and in particular the bottom of their home page, I am at a loss to know how they are members of "LinkedIn" and "Facebook", alongside of "The Law Society" and the "Solicitors Regulation Authority". Now if, like me, they were members of The Tufty Club, I would trust them (literally with my life).
Perhaps unsurprisingly this court decision hasn't made it to their Latest News page.
Re: Has this legal firm never heard of the Streisand effect?
If Limey shysters are anything like the ones over here I doubt they are smart enough to understand the Streisand Effect.
Re: that man got what he wanted
A 28k fine
Re: law
One question springs to mind - why didn't the Shysters sue TrustPilot? After all they were the ones who published the Libel.
TrustPilot are the distributor of the material, and will have covered their responsibilities by requiring the poster to confirm that the review was a true statement of his opinion (the judge ruled that it was not). There's probably also a full indemnity clause in the Ts & Cs box we all tick to say we've read.
Re: law
Thanks for the nice informed answer.
They also need some professional advice on how negative online reviews should be responded to - https://uk.trustpilot.com/review/www.summerfieldbrowne.com?stars=1
Covid angle
Maybe the guy couldn't attend due to Covid lockdown rules. Either way it seems suspicious that there are tens of thousands of serious criminal cases backlogged due to Covid yet a huffy lawyer gets court time.
Re: Covid angle
Possibly, but [1]reading a more detailed summary it would seem that the decision was made last August , itself a follow-on from a July hearing, suggesting it had been going on for much longer than that.
That article indicates that Mr Waymouth did not attend either hearing - both of which were held remotely - and made no attempt to engage with Summerfield Browne's dispute resolution process.
I'm not defending either him or Summerfield Browne, nor am I condemning either of them. There is a suggestion he might have rushed his review before several other things he perhaps ought to have done first.
[1] https://www.legalfutures.co.uk/latest-news/law-firm-awarded-25k-damages-for-defamatory-trustpilot-review
He's not alone
Look here https://uk.trustpilot.com/review/www.summerfieldbrowne.com?stars=1
Re: He's not alone
Yes, I've seen. The one star reviews represent 7% of reviews.
92% rate them as great/excellent, and 1% rates them as average. That's why they have an overall 4.6 out of 5 rating.
If you were coming in cold, it's hardly a company you'd avoid based on these reviews.
It is also worth reading some of the company's replies to those one star reviews. In one case, the reviewer is identified as not even being one of their clients, but is connected with another client who has a dispute!
If you're going to represent yourself...
... then you do actually have to turn up and represent yourself.