Failed attempt to subvert law on mitigation
October 06, 2009
Posted by:Stephen Hill
I returned recently from a very satisfying result in the High court that saw off an insurance company’s attempt to subvert the long established principle that a claimant is entitled to look to his negligent solicitor to correct a mistake made by the solicitor at his expense. Whilst it may arguably be incumbent on a client to take action to cure a problem that is easily soluble before suing his solicitor, this is certainly not the case where there is any real risk or complexity. In our case, the negligent solicitors (who had mistakenly transferred some land from the claimants’ names) had argued that the claimants’ failure to pursue legal proceedings against the recipients of the land in order to get it back amounted to a failure to mitigate. They argued that as a result they should have to pay none of the claimants’ legal costs arising from the claim against the solicitor..
Somewhat surprisingly this argument took us all the way to the door of the court where an old fashioned collapse of confidence saw the defendants agreeing to pay the claimants over £50,000 in legal costs. A good day and a fair result.