We were a client of Setfords from October 2020 - July 2021. Marian Araga was the consultant solicitor overseeing our case who has been totally negligent and in that time, we have spent almost £60,000 on fees with Setfords and the matter is still ongoing with another firm which is expected to go on for another 6 months at least. Marian eventually walked away from our case, claiming she had another job to go to, but the truth was that she realised she was out of her depth and passed our case to another firm only days before 2 further UKIPO deadlines were due (this was in addition to the original deadline she missed at the end of last year). Our current solicitor has identified how grossly negligent Marian has been, which confirmed to us why she quickly exited before costing our company even more money and stress. Marian, who claims to be able to deal with intellectual property matters, should have filed a TM7 Notice to the UKIPO, but she totally missed the deadline, in fact she never filed it at all, which resulted in the trademark being automatically granted in the oppositions favour which meant we have spent almost 12 months since, going down the invalidation route, in other words, fighting for the rights to our trademark. My daughter and I run a small company called Ethica Diamonds in Cornwall, which we have built together through sweat, tears and sacrifice over the last 10 years. We both really trusted that Marian had our best interests at heart. However, In total, her negligence has cost our company over £100,000 in unnecessary external counsel fees and overcharged solicitor bills that were grossly disproportionate given the mess they’ve left us in. We have worked hard for that money and it’s all been in vain, just about destroying everything we have worked for. After we complained to 2 of the managing directors, David Rogers and James Wilkes, and waited a total of 9 weeks for a response that we pushed for multiple times, we eventually received a disgusting waffle of a letter which poorly attempted to shift blame away from themselves, admitting nothing, yet offered us a menial £2,500 as a token of “compensation”, which in itself speaks volumes. If they are so confident they’ve done nothing wrong, why would they offer anything at all!
It was clear to us that Marian had been called in to her bosses to explain and it was so evident through the letter we received that she has lied to save her job, finding everything and anything to divert blame from herself, choosing instead, to focus on irrelevant issues (that have nothing to do with the mess and fight she’s left us with) than admit that it was solely her fault that she missed the UKIPO deadline. Marian should have done what was morally right and admit that she failed us as our legal representative. She should have told her boss that the amount of time and money she wasted going about everything in the wrong way was actually very negligent of her and held her hands up. And shame on the directors, David Rogers and James Wilkes who in their position, should have done their job properly and dealt with this awful situation with honesty, integrity, fairness and compassion, yet chose the easier lower moral ground and denied it instead.
It’s 100% clear that a solicitor in her position, should know how obvious and basic it is that a UKIPO deadline should never be missed under ANY CIRCUMSTANCES and would know that the repercussions of missing a deadline are extremely lengthy, stressful, expensive and can leave your business in ruins. My daughter and I are broken because of Marian Araga and Setfords actions because we’ve not been able to focus on our business now for over 12 months, which has had, and is still having, a devastating effect on both our emotional well-being and our business.
We are currently logging our complaints with the legal ombudsman and the SRA and are considering all other legal routes to get our money back.
