Mr A got a shock when he realised the implications of the decision he made following advice...
Mr A instructed the firm to represent him after he had been arrested. Mr A strongly denied any wrongdoing and wanted the matter resolved quickly.
The police proposed to deal with the offence by way of a police caution, which the firm advised him to accept. Mr A accepted the caution, however when he later asked the firm whether this caution would be recorded anywhere, the firm advised that it may appear on a DBS (Disclosure and Barring Service) check.
Mr A complained that the firm failed to advise of the consequences of accepting a caution. Mr A said that he planned to go into teaching so would never have accepted the caution if he had known that it would appear on a record that would affect his ability to do this.
We concluded that the firm’s service was unreasonable.
Firstly, the evidence showed that the firm advised Mr A to accept a caution on several occasions but did not explain any implications of doing this until after Mr A had accepted it. For example, the firm did not explain that accepting a caution was accepting guilt, although they were aware that Mr A maintained his innocence.
We would expect the firm to provide this information sooner and at the time they were providing advice so that their client can make an informed decision about how they wish to proceed. The firm failed to do this which was unreasonable.
If the firm’s service had been reasonable, it is possible Mr A would have accepted the caution regardless as he wanted the matter resolved quickly. Even if Mr A did not accept the caution, there was still a strong chance that he would have been charged for the offence in court. This means that there could have been a record of this offence in any event.
However, we recognised that Mr A was shocked when he found out about the implications of the caution as he was not aware of this beforehand. If the firm’s service had been reasonable, Mr A would not have experienced this upset, so we decided that compensation for the emotional impact would be a suitable remedy. The emotional impact of the firm’s unreasonable service was significant but not long term or permanent. For that reason, we proposed a compensation amount of £500.
