Roll on Friday
A barrister who lamped a German fashion designer at the opera has been banned from practising law for a year.
Matthew Feargrieve was settling down for a performance of Siegfried at the Royal Opera House in October 2018 when Ulrich Engler, a German fashion designer, attempted to take the empty seat next to Feargrieve’s wife, Catherine Chandler, just before the curtain went up.
Chandler’s coat was on the empty seat and she objected when Engler asked if he could sit there. Engler asked Chandler if she’d paid for the spare seat, to which she replied that she had not.
Engler testified that he then placed Chandler’s coat on her lap, while she claimed that he tossed it on the floor.
As the performance began, Feargrieve leaned over his wife and subjected Engler to a “constant flow of blows”, telling the designer, “How dare you talk to my wife like that?”
“I have never seen someone looking with so much anger and terror at me”, Engler said.
Feargrieve put out his own shoulder punching Engler and officers initially arrested the fashion designer on suspicion of grevious bodily harm. He spent the night in the cells and was also banned from the Royal Opera House.
Feargrieve was convicted of common assault, and a mere four and a half years later the Bar disciplinary tribunal has ruled that Feargrieve’s auditorium smackdown “was likely to diminish the trust and confidence which the public places in him or in the profession” and has ordered the Bar Standards Board not to issue him with a practising certificate for 12 months.
Feargrieve now runs his own consultancy, having previously been a partner at Withers and offshore firms Ozannes and Appleby. Neither he nor Engler responded to a request for arias.
https://www.rollonfriday.com/news-content/barrister-penalised-pummelling-german-opera
