Horsfield Menzies – Blog vs Behaviour : Marcia Sumbe – YOUR MOTIVE DOESN’T ANSWER THE FUCKING COMPLAINT

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The Horsfield Menzies complaint eventually found someone willing to process it. Entry 46. Source: SRA Complaint. Five labels sat beside it: scandalous, vexatious, unreasonable, disruptive and abusive. That was its destination inside the strike-out evidence Daniel Rubin sent to the Tribunal.

First, Rubin closed further correspondence about allegations against his firm. Later, a complaint asking the solicitor regulator to examine that firm appeared among the materials advanced against me. Meanwhile, Marcia Sumbe published a useful explanation of why personal motives cannot replace the proper assessment of a disclosure.

The complaint had finally become useful to Horsfield Menzies. It could help build the case against the complainant. Excellent. Let us carry Sumbe’s lesson through the office and see what happens when the allegation points towards the people paying for the stationery. Bring the email chain. Apparently, we need a fucking map.

Marcia Sumbe Supplies The Awkward Lesson

On 24 March 2026, Horsfield Menzies published Sumbe’s article about whistleblowing and personal motives. It examines Bibescu v Clare Jenner Ltd, where the Employment Appeal Tribunal identified errors in the assessment of alleged protected disclosures. The original tribunal had focused on the claimant’s wish to discredit a colleague.

However, the legal questions included whether she believed the disclosures served the public interest and whether that belief was reasonable. A personal motive could coexist with that belief. The EAT therefore sent the detriment claim back for reconsideration, while the rejection of her dismissal claim remained intact.

Sumbe captures the distinction neatly:

“whistleblowing protection does not fall away simply because an employee may have mixed motives.”

That judgment concerns statutory whistleblowing. My comparison concerns how the firm treats complaints about its own conduct. The legal tests differ, but the discipline of examining an allegation survives the journey between them. A complainant can have a personal stake, want redress and intensely dislike the people involved. Those circumstances still leave facts to examine.

Otherwise, the ideal complainant becomes someone untouched by the alleged wrongdoing, financially indifferent and delighted with everybody. A fucking ornamental complainant, polished every Friday and placed in reception where he will never trouble the partners.

The Horsfield Menzies Complaint Went Upstairs

On 23 March 2025, I emailed Angus Menzies, Simon Horsfield and Daniel Rubin. The subject identified an urgent compliance concern, alleged misconduct and data misuse, with the case number attached. My opening was wonderfully ambitious: “Dear All Partners”. Imagine still believing that would help.

The complaint named Sam Butler. It challenged the handling of medical information, contact with my medical provider, false statements presented as fact, and costs pressure. I also asked when I could expect a draft hearing bundle. Moreover, I expressly raised senior oversight because Rubin had appeared in the correspondence. I questioned whether Butler’s conduct had received approval or tolerance further up the firm.

These were serious allegations. My email was forceful and included legal conclusions which the firm could dispute. Yet it identified events, people and communications capable of examination. A reasoned rejection would still have supplied an answer. Silence merely left the questions sitting in three senior inboxes, waiting for someone to develop professional curiosity.

The following afternoon, I chased all three partners. The request was not cryptic:

“I would appreciate it if you could kindly acknowledge receipt of my concerns, confirm an investigation (if any) and confirm when I can expect to receive a response.”

The bundle question remained outstanding too. By then, I was performing unpaid customer service for the complaints department: hello, gentlemen, your accountability appears to have stalled. Have you tried reading the bloody email?

Daniel Rubin Closes The Correspondence

On 25 March, a separate settlement proposal also formed part of the exchange. Rubin rejected it and said Cepac had instructed the firm against settlement discussions. His reply then moved from the commercial proposal to allegations against Horsfield Menzies itself:

“We will not be engaging in any further correspondence with you about this matter insofar as it relates to allegations against this firm or our staff.”

There is the decision, in his own words. The email communicated no findings, identified no investigation and supplied no reasons addressing the conduct I had reported. Rubin then added another sentence which would become considerably more interesting when the later evidence arrived:

“We reserve the right to refer to your recent correspondence as further evidence of your unreasonable conduct in these proceedings.”

What a contemptible little arrangement. The firm would stop discussing allegations against itself while reserving the right to use my correspondence against me. Please direct all complaints to the evidence department. A member of our team may use them against you shortly.

Declining a settlement proposal settles one question: the proposal has failed. It leaves the conduct questions sitting on the desk. Rubin’s warning also changes the atmosphere around that desk because continued correspondence may acquire another purpose in the litigation. The unanswered complaint now comes with a potential cost for persistence. How reassuring. The help button appears to be wired to the alarm.

The Horsfield Menzies Complaint Became Entry 46

On 23 February 2026, Rubin emailed the Tribunal a new skeleton argument and supporting documents. Among them was “Strike Out Evidence Part 1”, an 84-page collection of extracts from my communications and blog posts. At entry 46, dated 25 March 2025, the source reads “SRA Complaint”.

The entry reproduces allegations about Butler’s conduct and Rubin’s oversight. Beside those extracts sit these classifications:

“Scandalous / Vexatious / Unreasonable / Disruptive / Abusive”

Those are the labels in the firm’s evidence table. Horsfield Menzies usually plays conduct bingo one loaded adjective at a time. Here, it emptied the fucking drum onto the table and claimed a full house. They are not findings made by the regulator. However, the table establishes something ugly enough: extracts from my complaint to the solicitor regulator had become part of the material supporting an application to strike out my case.

I asked the regulator to examine the solicitors. Their evidence table put extracts from that request back in front of the Tribunal as a problem with me. Rubin had closed further correspondence about allegations against his firm. Subsequently, he sent the document containing the regulatory complaint to the Tribunal. The same complaint seeking outside scrutiny now occupied a numbered slot in the case against my conduct.

What a bastard of a filing system. The allegation goes upstairs, the correspondence closes and the complaint eventually returns wearing five adjectives. By then, it has acquired a new administrative purpose: helping to prosecute the character of the person who raised it. It is the procedural equivalent of reporting an assault and watching the accused wave your angry statement around as evidence that you are the dangerous one.

Their Own Policy Points To The Regulator

Horsfield Menzies publishes a complaints policy which directs people with concerns about its behaviour towards the Solicitors Regulation Authority. Its examples include dishonesty and unfair treatment linked to disability. Consequently, a complaint to the SRA is hardly an exotic invention. The firm’s own published policy identifies that route.

Yet entry 46 places extracts from my SRA complaint in the strike-out evidence under those five labels. The language and allegations within that complaint can be examined. Calling on a regulator does not place every sentence beyond criticism, but criticising the wording does not answer the conduct questions underneath it.

This is where the despair acquires teeth. You raise concerns internally and receive a decision closing further correspondence. Your attempt to obtain outside scrutiny then appears in the paperwork used against you. Somewhere during that journey, the complaints route begins to resemble a revolving door attached to a threshing machine.

The firm’s website can point towards the regulator while its litigation table points back at the complainant. Lovely. Perhaps the complaints policy should come with a diagram, a warning siren and a spare pair of trousers.

Five Labels Still Leave Questions Unanswered

My complaint contained strong accusations. Testing them would mean examining the correspondence, the medical-information issues and the disputed representations, then explaining the conclusions. Instead, entry 46 tells the Tribunal how the firm classified selected passages. That classification serves its conduct argument but supplies no investigation outcome to the person who raised the concerns.

What did the firm establish about the contact with my medical provider? Which disputed statements did it check? What did the partners decide about the allegations concerning Butler? If the complaint was bollocks, show the work which established that. Identify the misunderstanding, supply the missing context and explain the conclusion.

A professional firm should be capable of more than placing its own dissatisfaction in a well-aligned column. Nevertheless, the adjectives perform a magnificent impression of completed work. Every extract has a box, the pages line up and somebody can tick off a task while enjoying the warm glow of administrative achievement.

The complaint has acquired formatting. The complainant still lacks an answer. Jesus Christ, they could locate my regulatory complaint precisely enough to give it entry 46. Where is the corresponding explanation of what they found when they examined the conduct it described?

Marcia Sumbe Was In The Cc Field

Rubin copied Marcia Sumbe into his 23 February 2026 email serving those materials. Her name appears in the Cc field alongside a delivery containing the new argument, evidence collections and costs schedules. The two evidence collections alone totalled 153 PDF pages: 84 in Part 1 and 69 in Part 2. The email therefore records a substantial exercise in selecting and presenting my words.

A month later, Sumbe’s article about personal motives appeared on the firm’s website. Her documented connection here is receipt of the case email and authorship of the public article. The Cc field does not establish that she wrote entry 46 or chose the litigation strategy, and the comparison does not need that invention.

The contrast belongs squarely inside the same firm. Its public advice explains the need for careful assessment even where personal motives exist. Its litigation material presents extracts from a complaint about itself as evidence of the complainant’s conduct. The marketing lesson and the case file already share an address. Perhaps someone could introduce them over the office kettle.

As for the partners, Angus Menzies and Simon Horsfield received my original complaint and chase. Daniel Rubin authored the refusal and sent the later evidence. Those distinct acts supply enough material without stuffing anybody else’s fingerprints onto the paperwork.

The Person Behind The Reference Number

Of course I had a personal stake. The dispute concerned my attempt to obtain work, my health information and my treatment during litigation. Financial interest and anger are hardly startling discoveries in that setting. Nevertheless, the conduct questions remained capable of examination because a person’s wish for redress does not cause an email or disputed representation to evaporate.

There is a particular despair in having to explain this while the paperwork multiplies. You complain, then explain why you complained. Next, you justify chasing the complaint. Eventually, you defend your objection to a reply which closed the conversation. Meanwhile, the original question sits there like a neglected houseplant, dying beside a printer which has never enjoyed better health.

For an unrepresented person, each new document means more reading and another response. The institution has staff, systems and professional distance. You have the evening, the next morning and whatever your nerves can spare. Every unanswered question spawns another procedural child, and somehow you remain responsible for feeding the entire fucking household.

That is why this sequence deserves contempt. The firm had the capacity to assemble detailed evidence about my conduct, yet its reply supplied no comparable explanation of what it had checked or concluded about its own. All that professional attention, and the answer still comes to fuck all.

The Tribunal Outcome Belongs In The Record

The one-sided conduct case eventually succeeded. Allegations had been made about the behaviour of both parties, yet the Tribunal examined mine without determining theirs. Imagine a fucking court convening a conduct hearing exclusively against me, despite accusations on both sides, then aiming every spotlight in one direction. Following the hearing on 24 April 2026, the Tribunal struck out my claims and ordered £20,000 in costs. It found my conduct unreasonable, scandalous and vexatious, and said my comments about the respondents’ solicitors lacked a reasonable foundation.

At paragraph 180, the judgment also recognised that strike-out would deny me a hearing on the merits of the issues raised in my claim. Both parts belong in the account. The Tribunal accepted the conduct case against me, while the underlying recruitment-discrimination dispute did not receive a completed merits hearing.

Entry 46 remains one identifiable part of the submitted material. Its presence does not establish that making an SRA complaint, by itself, caused the strike-out. It shows that extracts from that complaint formed part of the evidence advanced against me. My criticism rests on the quoted refusal, the evidence table and the absence of a communicated investigation outcome.

Rubin closed further correspondence about allegations against the firm and later submitted evidence which included the regulatory complaint. Whatever one thinks of my language, that sequence remains available for inspection. You can bind the paperwork beautifully, but the questions do not become less awkward when the cover closes.

Your Motive Doesn’t Answer The Fucking Complaint

The Horsfield Menzies complaint went directly to the partners. I chased for acknowledgment, a process and a response. Rubin closed the discussion about allegations against the firm and reserved the right to use my correspondence as conduct evidence. Later, the SRA complaint appeared in the strike-out material he sent to the Tribunal.

Sumbe received that email. Her subsequent article explained why mixed motives do not automatically defeat whistleblowing protection. The legal contexts differ, but the institutional question is painfully simple: how much curiosity survives when the allegation concerns your own firm?

Here, I can identify the refusal and locate the warning. The later evidence even supplies a number for the regulatory complaint. Yet the correspondence supplies no equivalent account of what the firm checked, found or concluded about the conduct I reported.

If such an account exists, provide it. TCAP will publish a substantive response and correct anything the evidence requires because accountability includes giving the people criticised a chance to answer. Until then, gentlemen, entry 46 still contains a complaint about you. Since you are so fond of labels, here are two words for your own column: diabolical cunts. Now give the adjectives a fucking afternoon off and answer it.

Lee Thompson – Founder, The Cummins Accountability Project

Sources

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