Conveyancing solicitors’ negligent transfer of wrong land
This was a professional negligence claim against our clients’ former conveyancing solicitors who had been instructed to deal with the sale of a public house owned and operated by our clients. Shortly after purchasing the pub 4 years earlier our clients had separately bought an adjoining piece of land for development purposes. When selling the pub, the defendant wrongly assumed that our clients wanted to include the land with the sale of the pub and it was transferred to the purchasers who then refused to return it.
We issued legal proceedings which lead to the land being returned. However, the defendant argued that our clients should not recover their substantial legal costs of the litigation because they should have tried harder to recover the land earlier. At the door of the hearing that was to decide the issue, the defendants finally agreed to pay the majority of the claimants’ legal costs.