Thankyou ROF – fantastic stuff indeed
A former Jones Day partner had been suspended for two years by the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal after he was found guilty of criminal contempt for trying to get evidence destroyed in defiance of a court order.
Raymond McKeeve used a private messaging app to communicate with the co-founder of Ocado when the entrepreneur left the company to build a rival online grocer with another ex-Ocado employee, and instructed McKeeve on the new business.
When Ocado sued the breakaways in 2019 for misappropriating confidential Ocado documents and obtained a search order against them, McKeeve contacted the group’s IT assistant and told him to “burn” the messaging app.
McKeeve testified that he only sent the burn notice to protect his wife, as he’d used her name as a pseudonym in the app. By the time of the search order her profile had risen as she had been elected as an MEP for the Brexit Party.
McKeeve, who left Jones Day in 2020, claimed to have “no idea what the Search Order related to or what in practice it meant”.
“The idea that I would have committed a contempt of anything just horrifies me”, he said. “The immediate response was, somebody is handing over a phone, that phone has an app that has my wife’s name on it, get rid of it. It was that simple and that stupid”.
No-one else at Jones Day had known about the app, and when litigation partner Sion Richards found out she immediately contacted McKeeve, who was at Wimbledon, and ordered him back to the office. McKeeve said he was “really angry”.
The High Court judge described McKeeve as “intelligent and driven”, but said “at times exhibited a degree of arrogance”, such as when he boasted in court that he could “annihilate” complex legal documents at high speed.
The judge rejected McKeeve’s claim that he did not know the search order encompassed the app and said he had demonstrated a “wilful intention to interfere with the due administration of justice” which, “sadly”, crossed the threshold of criminal contempt.
At his tribunal McKeeve said in mitigation that, “Clearly the findings of the High Court have concluded that my standards fell below that which would be expected of me. I recognise that failure and accept it, that is on my shoulders. I would like to, as I did with the High Court, apologise to the tribunal on the most absolute terms for what was an isolated act of, I think the High Court judge described it, as monumental stupidity”.
Although all the relevant parties are named in Ocado Group PLC & Anor v Raymond McKeeve [2022] EWJC 2079 (Ch) and countless articles about the High Court case, the SDT granted an anonymity application prohibiting McKeeve’s client and others from being named, for reasons it was unable to explain to RollOnFriday.
McKeeve told the tribunal, “I am heartbroken the career I have pursued has effectively been, through my own actions, taken away from me”.
Finding some measure of mercy, it suspended the solicitor for two years and ordered him to pay £20,000 costs.
Jones Day did not respond to a request for comment, but NOT because it burnt our email.
