England: Partner at law firm breached embargo on draft judgment

Fraud specialist Keith Oliver of Peters & Peters “expressed deep regret for his actions and provided a full apology to the court”, Lady Justice Carr stated in a judgment.

He represents a former partner of Swiss bank Banque Pictet in a case over alleged corruption of the former director general of Kuwait’s Public Institution for Social Security (PIFSS).

The Court of Appeal dismissed PIFSS’ appeal on jurisdictional issues on January 18 in a draft ruling. That evening, Mr Oliver tried to send a message to a group of senior partners at his firm. It stated: “We just won in the CA on the Pictet case. Huge jurisdictional victory.”

But he had sent it to the wrong group.

Lady Justice Carr said: “However, in fact Mr Oliver did not send a message to his fellow partners as he had intended.”

She added: “Instead, by error, he sent the message to a quite different group of 41 international lawyers in a group sharing interests and created for social reasons.”

He deleted it then sent it to the intended group. But the judge said this too was “undoubtedly” a breach of the embargo.

She added: “Communication with such partners did not fall within the narrow purposes for which the draft judgment had been released. These breaches should have been self-reported at the time.”

Kuwaiti news outlets tweeted the outcome of the appeal the morning before the judgment was handed down, prompting Mr Oliver to tell the court what had happened.

Lady Justice Carr said there was “no evidence of a link between Mr Oliver’s breach and publication in Kuwait via Kuwaiti/Arabic sources and media”, meaning “there must have been further breach”.

She added that “it is not clear who committed the breach” and that the court would not attempt to find out as it was unlikely to succeed.

She noted: “The use of electronic messaging requires greater, not lesser, attention to detail so as to ensure that errors of the type that occurred in this instance are not repeated.”

A barristers’ chambers in London was rebuked last month after publishing a press release about the outcome of a court ruling almost a full day prior to the handing down of the judgment.