The High Court has directed a group of solicitors at Byrne Wallace to identify jointly owned properties and specify when Anne Maye was advised that they passed to her by right of survivorship. The order was the only category of further particulars granted in her motion concerning the defence to her professional negligence claim.
In a judgment delivered on 5 October 2017, Mr Justice McDermott refused the other requests considered in the motion. He said the parties’ issues were sufficiently clear on those matters and that further particulars were not needed for a fair understanding of the case. The ruling concerns the scope of pleadings; it does not decide whether the solicitors or Kieran Duggan were negligent.
Mrs Maye alleges that, after her husband Liam died in 2008, the solicitors failed to advise her properly in her roles as executrix, beneficiary and owner of assets held jointly with him. She claims that she took on personal liabilities and paid estate debts without advice about the estate’s solvency, the distinction between estate and personal assets, or the consequences of transactions including an agreement involving Bernard Costelloe and loans connected to Lenridge Properties.
The defendants deny liability. Their pleaded case includes that Mrs Maye understood the legal and financial consequences of the transactions, received advice, and gave clear instructions to proceed. The judgment records that the parties disputed what advice was given and whether she understood the consequences. Those questions remain for evidence at trial.
The judge said the defendants had given adequate particulars on most of the general issues and the pleaded transactions. He declined to order further details about, among other matters, the Warren valuation reports, the advice allegedly given over the Costelloe agreement and indemnity, and the information said to inform Mrs Maye’s decisions. He noted that she had the solicitors’ files and that disputes about advice could be addressed through evidence and witness statements.
The limited order concerns the defendants’ claim that Mrs Maye was told that jointly held assets passed to her by survivorship. The judge said the properties involved formed a finite group and directed the defendants to give particulars for each property and identify the occasion on which any such advice was given. Whether advice was given about each property, and its legal consequences, remains for evidence and determination by the court.
The proceedings had been consolidated in 2014. The judgment also records that NAMA proceedings against Mrs Maye, brought in her capacity as executrix, were settled on terms that included a 2013 order revoking the grant of probate. That prior order is part of the background to the current claim; it was not the issue decided on this motion.