Tasmina Ahmed Sheikh’s judicial review of legal expenses decision ruled incompetent
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Tasmina Ahmed Sheikh
Former SNP MP Tasmina Ahmed Sheikh has failed in a bid to avoid paying legal expenses to the Scottish Solicitors’ Discipline Tribunal.
She had launched proceedings at the Court of Session after the SSDT ordered her to pay expenses in her professional misconduct case.
Ms Ahmed Sheikh was fined £3,000 along with Alan Mickel, who together ran now-defunct law firm Hamilton Burns.
The case, which turned on the handling of a trust fund, resulted in her being found guilty of professional misconduct. She was ordered to pay expenses on an agent and client basis.
The former MP sought judicial review of the decision.
But in a judgment issued on Friday, Lord Ericht ruled that the appeal must fail.
He wrote: “The petitioner has failed to exhaust her statutory remedy and this judicial review is incompetent. That is sufficient to dispose of this judicial review.”
Judicial review would only be available to her after she exhausted the normal appeal procedure.
Lord Ericht added: “Judicial review proceedings and appeal proceedings challenge a decision.
“The opportunity to make submissions before a decision is made is not a challenge to the decision itself.
“A decision can be challenged only after it is made.
“I shall sustain the first plea in law… and dismiss the petition as incompetent.”
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