Many years ago, I received the sort of phone call that any public relations adviser dreads – a solicitor client had been accused of assaulting a woman at his Belgravia offices and the press were all over the story.
Allen Chubb, then senior partner at a firm called Child & Child, had apparently rugby-tackled Laura Harold, the wife of a wealthy property developer, following a dispute in which he refused to hand over the deeds of her home before an outstanding bill was settled. Chubb was ultimately convicted of falsely imprisoning and causing actual bodily harm to Harold and faced a three-month suspension by the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal. The tale, unsurprisingly, resulted in reams of salacious media coverage – and that was in 1996.
