Possibility of negligent solicitors and compensation from them or others

thequant

BBB169 wrote: »

Yes I read the lease. In fact, I know my solicitor read it too - I remember having my attention to drawn to the fact that it stated I was not allowed to keep birds in the flat. It hadn't occurred to me that the absence of anything about parking was a worrying sign.


I raised queries with the solicitor regarding the parking space, and after much delay, I was assured that my queries had been dealt with. If I cannot rely on my solicitor to have some grasp of legal matters and to act in my interest, why not do it myself?


But I'm not a legal professional. Is it really a defence for a solicitor to say to a client "I was idiotic but so were you"?


Anyway, I'm very interested if you have any thoughts how I should proceed.

A lot is going to depend on the content of your emails to your sols. Without knowing the exact content, I suspect the "get out of jail card" for them is going to be that the property does have access to parking, just doesn't have dedicated parking.


Did you specifically ask about this ? or parking in general ?

BBB169

thequant wrote: »

A lot is going to depend on the content of your emails to your sols. Without knowing the exact content, I suspect the "get out of jail card" for them is going to be that the property does have access to parking, just doesn't have dedicated parking.


Did you specifically ask about this ? or parking in general ?

My solicitor wrote to the vendor's solicitor: "Kindly provide us with further details in relation to the private parking, i.e., who does the parking space belong to? Is the buyer required to make any contributions in relation to the use of the same?"

That was essentially the question I asked my solicitor to ask.

Jenniefour

BBB169 wrote: »

Yes I read the lease. In fact, I know my solicitor read it too - I remember having my attention to drawn to the fact that it stated I was not allowed to keep birds in the flat. It hadn't occurred to me that the absence of anything about parking was a worrying sign.

Perhaps here lies a big part of the problem.

1. In the sales particulars there was no mention of a parking space. Assuming your solicitor had a copy of this there would have been no reason whatsoever for them to assume a parking space was included in the sale.

2. You viewed the property and at some point in this process you were led to believe that the flat had a designated parking space.

3. The designated parking space is not on the lease, which has been read by both yourself and the solicitor.

4. Assuming your solicitor saw the sales details, they have seen two documents which agree in so far as there is no mention of a parking space.

5. So did you instruct your solicitor clearly that there was an important discrepancy - you had been led to believe (by whom and when?) that there was a designated parking space included in ownership of the lease and they should proceed with the purchase on condition that a parking space was part of the sale? Solicitors rely on us instructing them properly, they do not view the properties and are not part of any discussions that might take place with the vendors. So, if there are any discrepancies between what we believe we are buying and what the solicitors are buying on our behalf then they rely, to some extent, on us to point this out.

I would, though, after the answers on sellers form and getting the answer from the vendors solicitors, have expected your solicitors to check the lease in relation to that and tell you that there wasn't a parking space in the sale. Even though the vendor thought there was.

Richard_Webster

A solicitor relying on what another solicitor or the seller tells him is clearly inadequate. The lease is the starting point. If it does not clearly allocate a parking space to the flat then OP's solicitor should have clearly told OP this and asked the seller's solicitors to explain why the EA alleged that there was a parking space given the contents of the lease. The seller's solicitors would then have to have questioned their solicitors about it and probably would have come back to admit that their client had got it wrong and there was no such space. All this should have happened before exchange of contracts. OP could then have decided not to proceed.

However OP needs to be very clear that he/she asked this specific question of his/her solicitor before contracts were exchanged. The wording of the question could be important. If it said "Please tell me if a parking space is included with the flat - I don't want to buy the flat if there isn't one..." then the solicitor should not have exchanged without a very clear from you to a communication along the lines of "You realise that there is no parking space with this flat. You said you didn't want to proceed in this case. Please specifically confirm that you have changed your mind and want to go ahead notwithstanding that there is no parking space..."

I suspect it was not as clear cut as this. If there was no sensible answer to the questions that were raised then if you simply accepted the non-answer and didn't pursue the point further it is more difficult to hold the solicitors negligent unless it can be shown that they knew that this issue was critical for you.

If OP was given the seller's or the solicitor's answers to enquiries made which seemed to confirm the existence of a parking space and the solicitor's pre-contract report did not specifically say that there was no space then they could be negligent. A lay person cannot necessarily be expected to understand that such statements are not necessarily true, particularly if they are couched definite terms: "There is a space" as opposed to "We were told there is a space..."

If I had been acting for a buyer in circumstances where the seller in the Property Information Form had stated there was a parking space I would have asked the seller's solicitors to explain this given that the lease did not contain reference to it. In practice at that point they would either have to produce a deed of variation to the lease that added a parking space (unlikely) or admit there wasn't one.

I would have sent copies of these replies to the buyer and commented on them, but if either of these two answers had been given the comments would not have needed to be very long - a simple clear statement saying there was or was not a parking space. If you then went ahead and bought having been told there was no parking space I would not have been negligent.

If the seller's solicitors said something like "Our client told us there was a space..." then the unsatisfactory nature of such an answer ideally should have been pointed out, but this is not as a clear cut. The buyer's solicitor could reasonably argue that you do not have to be a lawyer to know that just because somebody says something that does not make it true.

Also measure of damages is probably going to be the difference in value between a similar flat with and one without parking and this isn't necessarily the actual cost of obtaining equivalent parking in the vicinity.

So I think it very much depends on exactly who said/wrote what to whom and when.