Letters to the Editor

THE RIGHT STUFF

I was delighted to hear that the Law Society's human rights function is now to have full committee status.

I recall in the 70s asking the then Society president to protest on behalf of the profession when lawyers acting for those imprisoned and tortured in Chile by the Pinochet regime were themselves detained.

I was told that this was a political matter in which the Society could not be involved.

After that, I helped to set up the solicitors' human rights group, which was given limited administrative assistance on a similar basis, I discovered, to the squash club and other leisure pursuits.

There followed a human rights working party on which I was glad to serve but its subordination to the international committee produced some tensions.

Now that human rights has gained proper recognition, I hope that it can be given the resources it needs.

Lawyers have a responsibility to defend the rule of law wherever it is under threat.

While obviously the Society cannot be expected to take on every case, current limitations are arbitrary and too restrictive.

Geoffrey Bindman, Bindman & Partners, London

INJUNCTION INSIGHT

Your article, stated that the last time a 'John Doe' injunction was used in the UK was in a landlord and tenant case in 1852 (see [2003] Gazette, 15 May, 4).

I suspect that there is some confusion here over legal fiction and reality.

The reason for this is that John Doe and his fictional counterpart Richard Roe were players in a legal fiction that was adopted by the courts for the trial of title to land.

The form of action was known as ejectment.

The procedure in ejectment involved a fictional claimant (John Doe) who held the land under a fictional lease purportedly granted by the real claimant.

John Doe alleged (fictionally) that he had been dispossessed by Richard Roe.

Doe would then sue Roe in respect of the dispossession.

The claimant's solicitors would write in Roe's name to the real defendant, informing him that an action had been begun which he did not propose to defend and advising him to apply to be joined as a party to the action.

The defendant was allowed to defend on the basis that he did not deny the fictitious lease or the fictitious dispossession by Roe.

The question was whether Doe had a better title to the land than the defendant as it followed that, if Doe had been ejected wrongly, then the claimant's title to the land was to be preferred to that of the defendant, as Doe held under a lease from the claimant.

The last time this procedure was used in the UK was in 1852 - ejectment was abolished as a form of action by the Common Law Procedure Act 1852.

Tim Foley, Clyde & Co, Guildford

ELECTRIFYING RESPONSE

I read with interest your report of an injunction having recently been obtained on behalf of the Harry Potter author JK Rowling against somebody whose identity was unknown.

A couple of years ago, I obtained an injunction against an e-mail address in circumstances in which the user of the address could not be established.

One of the terms of the injunction required the defendant to identify himself or herself by return e-mail.

An ancillary direction was also required for permission to serve the claim form and response pack in electronic form.

Mark Humphries, Linklaters, London

LEGAL AID ON BRINK

Even the Gazette has been diverted by the Lord Chancellor's dalliance with QC abolition and wig consultation from his great offence - the slow strangulation of legally aided services (see [2003] Gazette, 15 May, 11).

It is alleged that Nero fiddled while Rome burned.

He ordered the arson but then blamed and butchered the Christians.

The Lord Chancellor fiddles with QCs and wigs while legal aid starves to death.

In failing to fight his corner with the Treasury, the Lord Chancellor is guilty, but who will he blame and butcher?

Michael Burdett, Hanne & Co, London

REVVED UP FOR SAVINGS

David Kennedy is hopelessly pessimistic and is approaching the matter from the wrong end (see [2003] Gazette, 15 May, 16).

All property transactions are liable to 4% stamp duty.

By concession, if the property costs 250,001 there is a saving of 2,500 in stamp duty.

If the property costs 250,000, then the saving is even greater, namely 7,500 - enough to buy a brand new bottom-of-the-range super-mini with three years' warranty, six years' anti-rust guarantee, and two years' free insurance.

John Few, Eaton & Few, St Ives, Cambridge

A FIRM APPROACH

Your recent article on client accounts (see [2003] Gazette, 15 May, 20) states: 'The Society plans a review of the client account to combat dishonesty in the profession, looking at whether individual solicitors should continue to be allowed to hold client accounts or whether there should be centralised arrangements.' This was an error in the original Law Society main board paper.

It was agreed at the council meeting on 27 March 2003 that the section on client accounts in the papers should refer to 'firms' rather than to 'individual solicitors'.

Denis Cameron, chairman of the Law Society's conveyancing and land law committee