Louis Stanley Spragg struck off after £85,295 client account shortfall; £15,297 costs imposed
A solicitor of nearly five decades’ standing has been struck off the Roll after the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal (SDT) found he acted dishonestly in relation to a client account shortage of more than £85,000.
Louis Stanley Spragg, born in 1938 and admitted as a solicitor in 1968, faced allegations brought by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) concerning widespread breaches of accounting rules, failures to protect client money and a pattern of unaccountable transfers between accounts.
The tribunal heard that by October 2012, Spragg’s Dudley-based firm should have been holding £85,444.87 on behalf of clients. Instead, records showed just £149.68 remained. This produced a minimum cash shortage of £85,295.19, though the true figure may have been even higher. Spragg admitted the deficit but claimed it was the result of computer problems and a “rewrite” of accounts. The tribunal rejected this explanation.
Investigators discovered that Spragg authorised 24 unauthorised and unallocated transfers totalling £34,507.71 from the client bank account to the office account. In one instance, £6,877.41 was moved and quickly used to pay HMRC for tax liabilities. In another, £6,999.01 received from Legal & General on a client matter was transferred to office funds within weeks and linked to a payment to HMRC while the office account sat heavily overdrawn.
Embed from Getty ImagesThe tribunal also highlighted a £12,600 stamp duty payment, which should have come from office account but was instead improperly withdrawn from client funds. In another case, Spragg moved £1,000 from an estate for which he was sole executor into the office account, allegedly to cover funeral expenses. When those expenses did not materialise, he failed to return the money.
SRA investigators noted a further unexplained sum of £38,187.48 missing from accounts, with no documentation or client link. Despite repeated requests, Spragg could not provide evidence to reconcile the figures.
The tribunal concluded that Spragg’s conduct went beyond poor administration. It found he knowingly used client money for the firm’s benefit and had acted dishonestly by the standards of reasonable and honest people. His explanations citing computer failures and missing paperwork were dismissed as inadequate.
Although colleagues described Spragg as meticulous in dealing with petty cash and once regarded him as a “decent gentleman”, the tribunal said the scale of the shortage, the repeated transfers, and his failure to rectify the deficit made dishonesty unavoidable.
The SDT found him guilty of multiple breaches, including failures to act with integrity, act in clients’ best interests, maintain proper accounting systems, comply with regulatory obligations, and protect client money.
In delivering sanction, the panel noted dishonesty had been proved in four separate allegations. It emphasised that striking off was the “normal and necessary” outcome to maintain the profession’s reputation for integrity. No exceptional circumstances were identified to justify departure from that course.
Spragg, who did not attend the hearing citing ill health, had been made bankrupt earlier in 2014. Nevertheless, the tribunal ordered him to pay the SRA’s costs, assessed at £15,297.
The judgment leaves Spragg permanently struck off, ending a 46-year legal career. The SDT concluded that his conduct had damaged public confidence in solicitors and left the profession’s compensation fund to bear the cost of client losses.