Professional Negligence Case Studies

We have successfully resolved a number of professional negligence claims against other firms of solicitors. 
Some examples have included:

We recently advised clients, who were husband and wife, in relation to the negligence of their previous conveyancing solicitors who had failed to ensure that our clients’ ownership of their property was properly registered.

Our clients discovered their previous solicitors’ negligence when they decided to sell their home and were advised that, according to the official register of title, they did not own the leasehold interest in their property and instead owned only the freehold to the upstairs flat and a small section of the back yard.  Without title to their own property they were unable to sell the same and lost money on both the proposed sale of their own property and their intended purchase of another.

We were involved in relation to a married couple who purchased a property without a mortgage and sought a Structural Survey. This was carried out wrongly and failed to report on structural defects in relation to the roof construction requiring extensive remedial repairs. We were able to advise Clients upon the method of assessment of damages, dealt with the Surveyors insurers, and following the issue of proceedings settlement was achieved resulting in a payment of damages to the client and payment of their legal costs.

We have also acted for a business client whose former solicitors failed to give our client appropriate advice to enable him to preserve an existing planning permission.    Our client wanted to ensure that the planning permission – which gave him advantageous terms – would not lapse.

Unfortunately, our client, acting in reliance upon advice given to him by his former solicitors, did not comply with certain conditions of the planning permission and this resulted in the lapse of the permission and meant that our client had to make a fresh planning application.

Our professional negligence team recently acted for clients, who were husband and wife, whose previous solicitors acted negligently in the conduct of a neighbour boundary dispute.

During negotiations with the other party to the boundary dispute, our clients’ former solicitors negligently failed to mark certain pieces of correspondence correctly.  The former solicitors also failed to advise our clients of the possible cost consequences of not doing so.

As a result, upon settlement of the boundary dispute in our clients’ favour the court made no order as to costs and our clients had to pay their own legal costs despite having been successful in their claim.

When we investigated this matter on behalf of our clients, we found that there was strong evidence in support of the fact that our clients would not have had to pay their own legal costs in relation to the boundary dispute had the correspondence been marked correctly and instead they would have been paid by the other party to the dispute.

We acted on behalf of a client who had instructed her former solicitors to assist in the purchase of a property for herself and her partner in January 2005.

Our client contributed a lump sum towards the purchase price of the joint new property - she was able to do this from the proceeds of sale of her own property - and the remainder of the purchase price was funded by a mortgage which was to be held by our client and her then partner in joint names.

Our client’s former solicitors failed to advise her properly in relation to the different ways in which a property can be held by co-owners and, furthermore, failed to take instructions from our client and her partner upon this issue.

Subsequently, when our client and her partner separated, it transpired that the couple held the property as joint tenants, rather than as tenants in common.  This meant that our client’s partner was entitled to half of the equity in the property notwithstanding the fact that our client, from her own funds, had contributed a significant lump towards the purchase price and therefore had a greater financial interest in the property.