How to find out who's liable for our losses

TeaCosy

Hi all

We need some advice and are wondering whether there is anyone out there who has had a similar experience.

We were supposed to exchange and complete contracts on the same day for both our sale and purchase. I felt a little uneasy about this but was assured by my solicitor that all would be fine.

The day of exchange/completion arrived and our belongings were being packed into the removals lorries when my solicitor called to say that our vendor had not realised that we were completing that day so had no removals arranged and therefore could not move out.

We chose to go ahead with our sale and completed that side of things and our removals company stored our belongings. We stayed with family in the meantime and agreed a new completion date for the following week which was the earliest that our removals company could do.

The extra removals costs were just shy of £800 and my partner (self employed) had to take an additional day off work costing us another circa £200.

We would really like to try to recoup this money but the problem is we don't know who made the mistake. Our solicitor initially blamed our vendor, then later said it was our vendors estate agent as they should have been keeping an eye on things. Our vendors estate agent said that the vendors solicitor had informed our solicitor several weeks before that the proposed completion date was not viable.

We haven't spoken to our solicitor about this situation since then as I don't know how best to approach the situation.

Any advice would be very gratefully received.

anselld

Your mistake .. exchange and completion same day.

Fosterdog

There's not much you can do as exchange had not taken place so anything could go wrong, there was still a chance for any party involved to pull out completely with no penalty (other than their own costs). This is the downside of exchanging and completing on the same day.

TeaCosy

Thanks for the advice

To be honest we just went with our solicitors advice. She just told us that we would be exchanging and completing on the same day and we should have questioned it further but didn't, other than me emailing her a few days before to check that everything was definitely okay as I felt uneasy.

We did go ahead and exchange on our purchase that day and agreed completion the following week.

moneyistooshorttomention

Yep...agreed. It's down to you. Your solicitor shouldnt have just "told" you that you would be Exchanging/Completing on same day. She was out of order if she "told" you what to do - rather than "advised" you.

Solicitors advise - and then the client decides whether to take that advice or no. They don't "tell"/order and, if she did, then she was wrong to.

But you should have turned round to her and said "We are the customers in this situation. It's our decision then. Our decision is that we will have x amount of time in between Exchange and Completion". She was out of order trying to "tell" you what to do like that - but you should have "answered back" and reminded her you are the Customer and you didnt.

always_sunny

TeaCosy wrote: »

How to find out who's liable for our losses

You. On the day, you could have decided not to go ahead and stay put instead you chose to move. Your decision, your liability.
If the vendor had pull out of the same day the minute before exchange, they still would not be liable (assuming you're in England/Wales).

TeaCosy

I should add, to be clear, that I don't believe our vendor was at any fault so I wouldn't be trying to make any claim against her.

It's clear to me that the situation arose as a miscommunication between solicitors and I would like to find out where the error occurred so that we can ask for some recompense for our costs.

TeaCosy

always_sunny wrote: »

You. On the day, you could have decided not to go ahead and stay put instead you chose to move. Your decision, your liability.
If the vendor had pull out of the same day the minute before exchange, they still would not be liable (assuming you're in England/Wales).

Yes we did agree to go ahead with our sale but the majority of our extra removals fees was for an extra days removals which would have happened whether we stayed in our house or not.

moneyistooshorttomention

Thinking further on this - and I think the only thing you can do is:
- learn to be more cynical about even taking advice from a professional (who should know what they are doing)

- perhaps write a letter to the person in charge of this firm of solicitors and state exactly what advice/"telling you what to do" you had from this particular employee of theirs and that it had caused you the following problem/bill and been a hardship to you to pay it and inconvenience to be put through the hassle involved. Followed by asking them to have a word with this particular solicitor about the pitfalls that can be encountered by a same day Exchange/Completion and that a solicitor should be aware of these factors and you hope she is "advised suitably" about these pitfalls - in order that no future clients incur such problems and expense because of her giving similar advice?/orders? to them.

You might just get lucky - if that really was her advice to you/telling you what to do and get an ex gratia payment not admitting liability. I wouldnt hold my breath about it though.

You'll probably get a very anodyne/admit nothing/no money enclosed reply to your letter - but the solicitor concerned will probably be told off for having given such dud advice that it hasnt helped the firms reputation. At least you will be able to take a bit of comfort from knowing she's less likely to do that to anyone else in the future. Solicitors are supposed to know about possible pitfalls like this - and a responsible one would advise against same day Exchange/Completion and explain the sort of thing that could go wrong with that.

TeaCosy

moneyistooshorttomention wrote: »

Yep...agreed. It's down to you. Your solicitor shouldnt have just "told" you that you would be Exchanging/Completing on same day. She was out of order if she "told" you what to do - rather than "advised" you.

Solicitors advise - and then the client decides whether to take that advice or no. They don't "tell"/order and, if she did, then she was wrong to.

But you should have turned round to her and said "We are the customers in this situation. It's our decision then. Our decision is that we will have x amount of time in between Exchange and Completion". She was out of order trying to "tell" you what to do like that - but you should have "answered back" and reminded her you are the Customer and you didnt.

I completely agree in hindsight that we should have questioned this decision. I know it was stupid but we went along with it being assured that all would be okay.

davidmcn

TeaCosy wrote: »

It's clear to me that the situation arose as a miscommunication between solicitors

It's not clear to us. More likely is a miscommunication between the vendors and their solicitors, or the vendors failing to exchange for some other reason, neither of which merits any recompense to you.

There's always a risk that exchange won't happen when you hope it will, and until it does then neither party has any obligations to the other - that is after all the fundamental difference between being in a contract and not being in a contract.

When you say you were "assured by my solicitor that all would be fine", what exactly did they say? Copy and paste it here (you did get their advice in writing, didn't you?). I doubt any solicitor would give a cast-iron guarantee that exchange will definitely happen - even once exchanged they can't guarantee that completion will happen when it's meant to.