- British lawyer Ramya Nagesh was accused of misconduct after falling asleep during a coroner's inquest.
- Nagesh was representing a nurse witness but nodded off and missed her client giving evidence.
- A tribunal cleared her of all professional misconduct charges after she cited medical issues.
British barrister and sleepwalking expert, Ramya Nagesh, has been cleared of all professional misconduct charges by the Bar Standards Board after she fell asleep during an inquest.
Nagesh had appeared remotely from a hotel room to represent her client, a nurse witness, at a coroner's inquest in December 2022.
But questions were raised about Nagesh's whereabouts when she failed to answer questions aimed at her by the coronor, The Telegraph reported.
The tribunal heard that Nagesh returned to the inquest 15 minutes late after she took a nap during the court's 45-minute lunch break. She then drifted off again, for another two hours, this time missing her client giving evidence.
Multiple people from the court and her own chambers tried to reach Nagesh by phone but no one could get through to her.
During the tribunal on Tuesday, Nagesh claimed that she had suffered from "excessive sleepiness" caused by undiagnosed effects of long Covid, vitamin D deficiency, and a sleep disorder involving bad dreams, The Telegraph reported.
Nagesh, who has previously written an academic book about how cases of sleepwalking are treated in criminal law, was cleared of all professional misconduct charges by the tribunal.
Business Insider contacted Nagesh for comment but didn't immediately hear back.
Other people suffering with long Covid have reported that symptoms of fatigue and "brain fog" impact their daily job performance.
A report from the Brookings Institute in 2022 estimated that long Covid could have caused around 1.6 million Americans to be missing from the workforce at that time.