The SRA will take no action against a Fieldfisher associate who was found to have deliberately lied in her account of being sexually assaulted by a colleague.
The regulator was investigating the matter but has closed its probe, RollOnFriday has learned.
The female lawyer, identified as ‘Colleague 1’, remains protected by an anonymity order.
She claimed that then-Fieldfisher associate Jams Rustambekov pulled her into a bathroom at a work event at the London Hilton and pinned her against the wall, then kissed her without consent while trying to reach under her skirt.
Fieldfisher sacked Rustambekov as a result of the allegations against him, but he sued the firm for unfair dismissal at an Employment Tribunal and won.
Employment Judge Anthony found that Colleague 1 falsely alleged the encounter was non-consensual in order to protect her reputation, and that Fieldfisher knew her evidence was false and conducted an “unfair” procedure against Rustambekov.
The judge expressed incredulity when it emerged that Fieldfisher’s investigation had been privy to a description of CCTV footage provided by the Hilton which contradicted Colleague 1’s version of events.
The Hilton said the video showed that Colleague 1 and Rustambekov began kissing in the hallway after she initiated a hug, and that contact between the two lawyers “seems consensual from both sides”.
Colleague 1 and Rustambekov emerged from the bathroom “smiling” and “No force was used at all”, it said.
Citing data privacy concerns, Colleague 1 refused to consent to the CCTV footage itself being released to the investigation.
She said she found the prospect of “someone watching the CCTV surrounding the events of her being sexually assaulted very upsetting and did not want to have additional trauma or to be retraumatised by that”.
Judge Anthony concluded that Colleague 1’s account was “wholly unsupported” by the Hilton’s description of the footage and “wholly incredible”.
“I find the sequence of events indicate Colleague 1 knew her complaint about being grabbed and pulled into the accessible toilet was patently false”, she said.
Colleague 1 told “a lie” whose purpose “could only be to protect her own interests and her reputation”, said the judge.
Fieldfisher accepted at the tribunal that it knew elements of Colleague 1’s evidence were incorrect, but claimed it thought the discrepancies were accidental. The tribunal found its process was “unfair”.
Despite the judge’s assessment that Colleague 1 gave “deliberate false evidence”, the SRA will not pursue sanctions against the solicitor.
A spokesperson for the regulator told ROF, “We conducted an investigation into this case and having reviewed the evidence, we decided to close the matter with no further action”.
“If further information is made available, we can look again at the issues.”
The decision has upset some staff, as has the firm’s continued support of Colleague 1’s career development. “It’s caused quite an outrage and people are really annoyed”, claimed an insider.
Fieldfisher declined to comment.
in 2021, CCTV also undid a Linklaters paralegal’s claim of sexual assault – though in 2016 video footage caught a Fieldfisher IT worker fleeing the loos just after he sexually assaulted a paralegal.
