Before getting sympathetic coverage in the Evening Standard this afternoon, Rebecca Sabben-Clare QC instructed lawyers Schillings to bully the media into not naming her. She cited the Cliff Richard case to invoke a supposed right-to-privacy in an attempt to keep her name out of the story. Sabben-Clare had let her dog off its leash and it attacked and mauled the ten-month old seal pup that had become known as “Freddie Mercury” for its entertaining nature. The seal was put down as a result of its injuries.
Rebecca Sabbren-Clare set legal dogs Schillings on the press yesterday afternoon to try and cover-up her name, when that didn’t work after the Mail Online named her, Rebecca Sabben-Clare switched tactics and cooperated with a soft-soap PR puff piece telling the Standard:
I am heartbroken by this terrible accident. As an animal lover, I fully understand the dismay that has been expressed. I apologise unreservedly for what happened. In hindsight I wish, of course, that the dog had been on a lead but at the time that did not seem necessary.
Yet another example of the rich and powerful trying it on with lawyers to muzzle the press. Shame Rebecca Sabben-Clare QC didn’t muzzle her dog. Didn’t work and Schillings have lost again…
Journalists have long been familiar with the experience of an email from the Schillings law firm landing in their inbox threatening them not to publish a story about various celebrity clients, from footballers like John Terry and Cristiano Ronaldo to controversial oligarchs like Oleg Deripaska and charming businessmen like Philip Greene. Only the most distinguished clients…
So when Schillings themselves came under the spotlight earlier this year after the press got wind that their former Operations Director Martin Flowers had been illicitly selling on company phones, Schillings naturally came down like a tonne of bricks on papers attempting to run the story. One national publication received an aggressive letter from Schillings point blank denying the story:
“There is no proper basis for such serious allegations to be made. There has been no data breach. If you have any evidence to support your allegation, you should put this to us. You will not be able to do so, as no such evidence exists. You are not the first media outlet seeking to publish this serious allegation, which derives from a malicious source who has express knowledge of the falsity of the allegation and has an axe to grind against this firm, evident from his attempts to have other newspapers publish his false allegation when others realise this would be unlawful.”
It turns out that the evidence very much did exist – the Solicitors Regulation Authority this week found that Flowers had indeed taken 95 handsets belonging to Schillings and then sold them to a phone recycler over five years, pocketing £13,547 for himself. Flowers was fined the same amount by the SRA and disqualified from working in the legal profession or being employed by any licensed body. Schillings’ clients like Deripaska will no doubt be delighted that corporate phones from their legal representatives made their way onto the black market. Whoever sent the misleading letter from Schillings is lucky they didn’t sign it with their own name, otherwise they might well be facing an inquiry from the SRA themselves now…
UPDATE: A co-conspirator notes that according to the SRA’s report, Schillings were first “alerted by Vodafone after it had identified unusual activity on the account”. For Vodafone to notice the unusual activity this suggests that the phones were still connected to the network when they were sold on. Could potentially turn into an even stickier situation for Schillings…
