Richard O'Hagan - Solicitor

26/09/2025

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29/04/2020

The lockdown appears to be having a strange effect on some lawyers. This week I have had one try to tell me it was ‘barbaric’ (their actual word) that their client did not have a car, whilst another apparently has nothing better to do than send me half-a-dozen emails a day asking if I yet have instructions on something that doesn’t require an answer for over a fortnight.

We, on the other hand, are as busy as ever and apparently not going as stir crazy as some others. If you want lawyers who know the difference between ‘savage cruelty’ and ‘slightly inconvenient’, and who aren’t going to waste time and money by being the legal equivalent of a hyped-up toddler screaming ‘are we nearly there yet’, then you know where to come.

03/04/2020

In case anyone had heard about it and was wondering, I absolutely do not endorse this advice. Not only is it bordering on the unethical, it is simply bad advice. The idea only works if you somehow encounter both another lawyer and a judge who is a complete idiot and agrees to it. Obviously, if people want sensible, ethical advice then I'm here for you.

Every cloud

25/10/2019

I spent an afternoon this week learning about contractual male ni***es.

If you would like to know what they are - and whether you have them (and yes, even non-males can have them) - then I offer a very reasonably-priced service for reviewing your contracts and telling you. I'll throw in telling you all of the other things that are wrong with the contract for free.

14/10/2019

Excellent news and a rare show of common sense and compassion from a British government.

The even better news is that you can still make things even cheaper by actually making a Will, too.

And I loved the reference to our 'world-leading' courts system. That's code for 'slightly less rubbish than some places we could mention'.

The Law Society 'relieved' by the MoJ's announcement, having campaigned against the fee increase.

01/04/2019

Twenty years ago today, it happened. It happened with scarcely a whimper, let alone a bang.

On the evening of Wednesday 31 March 1999 I left the office as a complete nobody. On the morning of Thursday 1 April 1999 I returned, still a complete nobody, but a complete nobody who was entitled to refer to themselves as being a solicitor.

Twenty years on, I’m still doing the same thing. In fact, the anniversary only registered with me because a potential client asked if I was ‘any good’. That’s never a question which I feel able to answer. Not only do I believe that it is for others to judge that, but I have always felt that it is dangerous to believe that you are better than any other lawyer that you might be dealing with. Instead, I gave my stock answer to that question, which was to point out that I had been doing the job for a long time (a lot longer than 20 years, in fact).

I’m mentioning all of this because experience is important in any profession. I don’t just confine myself to one area of law, because I think that would give me too narrow an overview of things. Focussing on more than one thing forces you to keep up to date, to keep learning and never to take anything for granted. After this amount of time, I hope that I’m still succeeding.

04/02/2019

My second boss did something similar to this. A large criminal law practice, his head office was almost right next door to one of the biggest police stations in Manchester. One evening he had apparently left his car at the office, gone to the pub, and then tottered unsteadily back to it with the intention of driving home. He was promptly collared by one of the policemen who was returning to the station. (In an odd twist, he then employed an ex-policeman as his personal chauffeur whilst he served out his inevitable driving ban).

Steven Baggott agrees fine and rebuke with SRA after conviction for driving with excess alcohol.

20/01/2019

You can't beat a good lawyer joke...

A cartoon by Pia Guerra.

26/09/2018

I thought it was time for a slightly NSFW post about a legal subject. And how much more NSFW can you get than a beer named after one of the rudest towns on the planet? What this does show, though, is how important it is to get the right kind of legal advice at every stage of your business career. If these people had not been reasonably sure that they would win this case, their business model would've largely collapsed. Which may have caused them to say the name of their beer a few times.

The EU's trademarks authority has permitted a German firm to brew beer and produce clothing under the name "Fu***ng Hell". It may be an expletive in English, but in German it could refer to a light ale -- Hell -- from the Austrian town of Fu***ng. Whether it will be brewed there is another question.

14/08/2018

The defendants in this case had barely left court before I was getting messages asking how this verdict could’ve been reached. Was there not video evidence showing Ben Stokes punching Ryan Ali to the ground? How could he not be guilty of something?

There’s a simple answer to those questions, which is that, at the end of the day, the jury did not believe that the prosecution had proved beyond reasonable doubt that either Stokes or Ali was doing anything other than acting in self-defence. One of the drawbacks with a charge like this is that, once the accused establishes that they were acting in self-defence, then provided that the force used is reasonable and proportionate, it is effectively a complete defence to the charges against them. (By ‘reasonable and proportionate’, I mean that you can’t usually get away with pulling a gun on someone who is about to punch you. You can fight fire with fire, but not with flamethrower.)

There were other things, too. Clearly the prosecution knew that they were in trouble before the trial started, because on the first day, before the jury were even sworn in, they made an application to downgrade the charges to assault occasioning actual bodily harm – an offence which, although it doesn’t sound like it, is regarded as a lesser one in the eyes of the law than affray and which would normally only attract a community punishment and/or fine rather than jail time.

Then there was the acquittal, halfway through the trial, of the third defendant, Ryan Hale. Although the jury would only have been told that the judge had decided that there was not a case for him to answer and that they must acquit him, that sort of thing always makes a jury wonder just how strong the case is against the other defendants.

Perhaps most tellingly, at no time did the prosecution seem to establish exactly what the sequence of events was. There was, of course, that video, but it only showed the end of the matter, not the beginning of it. There was a significant dispute as to what provoked the fight, with the two defendants blaming each other. That kind of defence – known to some as a ‘cutthroat defence’ – can be risky, as it can lead to a jury thinking that the two defendants are as bad as each other and finding them both guilty. On this occasion, though, they seem to have decided that what it really meant was that they simply could not be sure that things had unfolded in the way that the prosecution presented them. And that left them with no option but to acquit.

All of which goes to show just how important it is that every defendant has the right to elect to be tried by a jury in cases where they face imprisonment. Ben Stokes had already been convicted in the court of public opinion (a court which generally makes Judge Jeffreys look like a liberal softy), but in the court where it mattered the rights given to him and every person by a line of legislation dating from the Magna Carta prevailed.

The England cricketer shakes hands with co-accused Ryan Ali as they are cleared of all charges.

06/08/2018

This is a difficult case for a number of reasons, so let us begin with a little bit of disclosure. This case involves a teacher at one of my former schools. Whilst I was there at the time that this all took place, I am pretty sure that I never even spoke to him in all of my time there. However, a number of my friends knew him and his brother and attended the youth club which he ran in the evenings.

It was also widely rumoured that he had had relationships with older girls at the school, including at least one that I knew.

It is therefore understandable that there has been a certain amount of outrage at the outcome of this case. However, that outrage has been based upon a number of misconceptions about how cases of this type work.

First of all, it is erroneous to state that David Wesley was found ‘guilty’ of anything. That is not what has happened. He has not been convicted of anything. He was found to have committed the majority of the acts complained of, but because he could not give evidence in his own defence this is not the same as finding him ‘guilty’ of anything.

Having made this finding, the court then had to decide what to do with him. In such circumstances you can’t send someone to jail, because they’ve not been convicted of anything. You can send them to a secure psychiatric unit, but only if they have a condition which can be treated (which is why Peter Sutcliffe, the ‘Yorkshire Ripper’, was moved out of Broadmoor two years ago – doctors decided that his psychiatric condition could no longer be treated, so he had to move back into a prison for the rest of his life). You can impose a supervision order, placing certain requirements upon how they live their life, or you can discharge them.

In the case of someone suffering from dementia, their medical condition is not treatable, which rules out the psychiatric unit. They are also not considered to be capable of independent living, which means that a supervision order cannot be imposed. This leaves only a discharge, which is what happened in this case.

This has all led to two specific complaints, which is that the girls concerned have been failed by the justice system and the school, and that David Wesley should’ve been sent to jail anyway.

The answer to the second point is partially dealt with above, but let’s also imagine that the boot was on the other foot. How would you like it if you were sent to jail without being allowed a chance to defend yourself, because everyone assumed that you were guilty? The law does not treat rumour as fact and didn’t do so even in the days (which only ended just over a hundred years ago) when defendants were not allowed to give evidence in their defence. If you’re deemed incapable of conducting your own defence, then that’s exactly the situation that you are in.

Which is not to say that the victims don’t have rights, too. And it is perfectly understandable that they feel that the system (and the school) failed them. Had there been an investigation even a decade ago it seems likely that there would have been a very different outcome – but we can’t know for sure, because we don’t know what defence might have been put up. What this decision does, at least, give them is a potential claim for compensation against the school and to the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority, which is possibly scant consolation, but some consolation nonetheless.

Finally, one or two people have asked what would happen if this was all a scam and there is no dementia after all? Well, first of all, if that were the case then the defendant has somehow tricked two senior experts in the field into stating otherwise. Experts who prepare reports for court proceedings are usually very careful not to put their own reputations on the line by making diagnoses which can easily be challenged and in particular test for what they often call ‘inappropriate signs’, i.e. symptoms which are not consistent with the injury or illness being claimed. If the defendant has been clever enough to fool them, he had better be clever enough to keep up the pretence forever, because if not he could not only find himself facing similar charges in the future, but a charge of perverting the course of justice would almost certainly be added to the list – and that carries a maximum term of life imprisonment.

A former Leamington schoolteacher and youth club leader has walked free from court despite sexually assaulting four girls more than 25 years ago.