A British couple, in the process of getting a divorce, may have to get married again after a lawyer accidentally pressed the wrong button and dissolved their marriage too early.
Solicitors working for Ayesha Vardag, a high-profile divorce lawyer, "inadvertently opened the electronic case file in 'Williams v Williams' and proceeded to apply for a final order in that case," Sir Andrew McFarlane, a British judge, explained.
While the couple was separated, they had not yet finalized the financial component of ending their marriage of more than two decades. Within 21 minutes, the couple's divorce was finalized, the Guardian reported.
Two days later, the lawyers realized their mistake and asked for the courts to rescind the divorce order. McFarland declined, arguing that doing so could set a problematic legal precedent.
"There is a strong public policy interest in respecting the certainty and finality that flows from a final divorce order and maintaining the status quo that it has established," he said.
The judge further argued that the solicitors, at Vardag's firm, were oversimplifying the online process that resulted in the divorce finalization.
"Like many similar online processes, an operator may only get to the final screen where the final click of the mouse is made after traveling through a series of earlier screens," he said.
Vardag told the Law Society Gazette that she stood by her employee. She was critical of the decision, arguing that "when a mistake is brought to a court's attention, and everyone accepts that a mistake has been made, it obviously has to be undone."
"That means that, for now, our law says that you can be divorced by an error made on an online system. And that's just not right, not sensible, not justice."
