Letters to the Editor

WHY PAY TWICE?

The Law Society Council has just agreed to spend millions to expand the practice standards unit to inspect every firm regularly and will be increasing its staff from eight to 50 (see [2002] Gazette, 17 October, 1).

The council has announced that all firms with three or more outstanding complaints will be targeted.

This approach is far too simplistic: three complaints against a small firm which deals with few clients cannot be the same as three complaints against a firm which deals with more than 30,000 clients a year.

Surely firms which do not have the Lexcel accreditation should be targeted more?

The cost of the council's expansion package is estimated at 21 million over the next three years, which solicitors will pay for through our practising certificates.

Why should we pay the cost of Lexcel accreditation as well? The council's proposals seem to me to be regulation for its own sake.

The profession needs to moderate regulation with commercial reality.

Adele S Warchester, Director of Quality, Donns, Manchester

WATCHING THE CLOCK

Philippa Dolan trots out the old chestnut about CPR 56 being 'an inappropriate strait-jacket that hampers negotiations' (see [2002] Gazette, 17 October, 18).

I would be fascinated to know how it has this effect.

The renewal process starts with a section 25 notice or section 26 request.

You then have between two and four months to start proceedings (Landlord and Tenant Act 1954, 29(3)), a further two months in which to serve (CPR 56.3(3)), and then 14 days to request an automatic stay of three months (CPR 56.3(4)).

By the end of the automatic stay period the parties will have had a minimum of five months, and in practice anything up to nine-and-a-half months, in which to negotiate.

Why is it 'inappropriate' if at the end of that period I want to know what the specific issues are, and what the parties are actually doing or have actually done to address them? How am I 'hampering negotiations'?

LTA cases are allocated to the multi-track, one of the hallmarks of which is 'the flexibility given to the court in the way it will manage a case in a way appropriate to its particular needs' (PD 29.3.2(b)).

If you have a case which really does need to proceed slowly, or is genuinely difficult or complex, or in which there are good commercial reasons for not pursuing it to a final decision for a period, then explain the situation and judges can and will be flexible.

Look at part 3 of practice direction 26, and particularly 3.1.

But there is the world of difference between that and the evident belief in some quarters that a two-line letter saying nothing more than 'The parties are negotiating' every few weeks will suffice.

It shouldn't, and it won't.

Neil Hickman, District Judge, Milton Keynes and Aylesbury

VALUE FOR MONEY

A recent case illustrated by the Legal Servicemen Ombudsman demonstrates a lack of basic knowledge and understanding of a local authority search (see [2002] Gazette, 17 October, 46).

Conveyancing practitioners are aware of the limitation of such a search; in planning matters it only reveals planning issues relating to the property subject to that search.

The acting solicitor, the Office for the Supervision of Solicitors investigating the complaint and the ombudsman thereafter, have got it wrong.

Watchdog services cost our profession huge sums of money; we deserve better.

Maxwell D Cooke, George Wallace Solicitors, Ellesmere port, Cheshire

REVEALING THE GHOSTS

Paula Rohan's Hallowe'en article provides a number of instances where psychic factors have featured in legal situations (see [2002] Gazette, 31 October, 30).

I was involved on the sidelines in the much-publicised case of Melbourne & Podmore v Smith & Smith in 1998.

Mr and Mrs Smith withheld payment of the outstanding 3,000 balance of the purchase price of an old cottage they had acquired from the plaintiffs, claiming that only after the purchase was completed did they discover the property to be subject to violent psychic manifestations which forced them to vacate.

The plaintiffs sued for the outstanding balance and interest.

The defendants counterclaimed for misrepresentation and on the basis that the vendors had failed to disclose a latent defect (quoting Shepherd v Croft [1911] 1 Ch.

521).

The judge said the house was not haunted and found for the plaintiffs.

Had he accepted the defendants' story, the applicability of the law of misrepresentation and non-disclosure to this type of case would have had to be considered.

Roger Street, conveyancing locum solicitor, Christchurch, Dorset