After ordering a £43 takeout and slamming the door on the delivery man, a habitual dine-and-dash solicitor was fired.
Kerry Ann Stevens told a professional tribunal that she had previously paid online for the Just Eat order from a kebab shop, but this was a deception, and the innocent driver had the money taken out of his pay.
Following a magistrates court conviction on two charges of fraud, Ms Stevens was expelled from her profession after a panel determined her to have engaged in misconduct due to her “premeditated and deliberate” actions.
Due to her profession, she would have been in ‘no doubt whatsoever’ that she was committing a crime, the panel found.
It was revealed during the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal hearing that Ms Stevens used the Just Eat app to place a £43.47 meal order from a kebab eatery in January 2021.
Just after 8:00 p.m., a driver showed up at Ms. Stevens’ residence to deliver the meal and requested payment.
But, the Essex-based solicitor insisted she had already paid when she placed the order, and as the driver rang the restaurant to confirm, she shut the door in his face.
The Essex Grill kebab shop said Ms Stevens had not paid for the food. The delivery driver knocked on her door for several minutes, but she did not answer, and the bill was subsequently deducted from the driver’s salary.
The solicitor—who qualified in February 2016—told the police she believed her boyfriend had paid when placing the order online.
The panel heard that last year, at a Harvester restaurant in Rayleigh, Essex, Ms Stevens and her partner placed an order for £60.91 worth of food.
Ms. Stevens’ boyfriend left the restaurant after they had finished dining, and she informed the staff that her companion had stolen her bank card, making it impossible for her to pay for the food.
The solicitor said she would return to settle the bill and provided both her telephone number and her passport to staff.
When the duty manager of the restaurant phoned Ms Stevens later that night to clarify that payment could be handled over the phone, the solicitor stated she didn’t have any additional cards and promised to return the following morning to settle the amount.
However, the manager’s attempt to reach Ms Stevens at the given number the next day was unsuccessful.
She sent an email to the Harvester’s care team months later, informing them that she would need to pick up her passport.
The manager contacted her again using a second telephone number, which was later provided and said she would need to pay the bill and retrieve the passport.
The police were subsequently notified by the restaurant about her, and quite rightly. Those who uphold the law should be exemplary citizens, and the same should apply to the police et cetera, but she got exactly what she deserved, and she will be lucky to get any sort of job now because of her dishonesty.
Was this lady a legal executive or a genuine solicitor? If so, how did she get qualified to practise law?
Why did it take so many crimes to be struck off? Surely one was enough. After all, solicitors are supposed to be law-abiding, and she also threw away a huge figure salary for the sake of a £43 meal, and she probably earned more than enough to pay for the meal.
It still amazes me that she believed she could get away with it. She studied hard and for a long time to obtain her source of income, therefore she wasn’t that smart, was she?
What a truly nasty individual. She should be made to pay all of the money, plus interest and compensation, and it’s so wrong that the delivery driver had the money deducted from his wages. This practice needs to be outlawed, along with hire and fire.
It’s unbelievable, that this woman trained to be a solicitor and upstanding member of society and then acts like the dreg of society—she doesn’t deserve the future that she could have had.
THE MONTHLY MOSQUITO 