For solicitors, the statement, in Replies to Conveyancing Requisitions, “Vendor says no” is common and fateful. It lay behind the difficulties inflicted on the purchasers of landlocked premises in Doran & Anor v Delaney & Ors (No. 2) [1998] IEHC 166; [1999] 1 IR 303; [1999] 1 ILRM 225 (25th November, 1998).
It invites consideration of the need for tone in Requisitions or Rejoinders; something like; “So?” or “Is that so?”
Students of history might recall the phrase “… to lie like a Bulletin…”, in currency in France during Napoleon’s reign. It is not just in Bulletins that lies are propagated.
Not that Vendors commonly lie; to Purchasers or their solicitors or Vendors’ solicitors. No, indeed, but a sceptical tone is appropriate, nonetheless.
Not that a suitable tone would have availed the Defendant solicitor in Kelleher & Anor -v- O’Connor practicing as Don O’Connor & Company [2010] IEHC
Here, the Vendor’s reply to a request for evidence of registration as a restaurant was; “None available”. In fact the premises was registered. The solicitor’s failure to procure a correct reply was not a cause of the Plaintiffs’ difficulties, as the High Court found; it was in his failure to tell the Plaintiffs to make their own investigations of the premises and its suitability for use as a restaurant that he was failing.
For the legal profession, there is good news in this. It establishes that a solicitor should be paid, by a client, not for accepting instructions, but for giving advice.
Where the property market is flat, as now, the correct advice must be; wait.
Where did I leave my Invoice generator?