The Supreme Court has reduced Rosbeg Partners’ damages award against its former solicitors, LK Shields, from €11.077 million to €5.2465 million, after finding that losses caused by the firm’s failure to complete title registration should not have been calculated through to the 2013 High Court hearing.
In a judgment delivered on 18 April 2018, the court allowed the firm’s appeal and set aside the High Court judgment. It substituted a judgment for €5.2465 million and gave the parties liberty to apply if necessary about the calculation of interest and capital gains tax. The court did not admit the firm’s proposed fresh evidence concerning later transactions involving the property.
The negligence itself was not disputed. Rosbeg had bought Unit 520, Western Industrial Estate, Naas Road, Dublin 12, in 1994. The firm failed to complete steps needed to register part of the title. The Supreme Court said the defect was curable, did not prevent a sale, and was eventually resolved, with registration completed by October 2008.
The High Court had found that Rosbeg intended to sell the property to a Harris interest for €10 million in late 2007 and probably would have done so but for the title problem. It awarded €8.5 million for the property’s fall in value to the time of the 2013 hearing, along with €1,452,961 for additional loan interest and €1,124,248 for additional tax.
The Supreme Court agreed that the High Court’s factual findings about the likely 2007 sale could not be overturned on appeal. But it said that did not establish that the firm was legally responsible for all the subsequent fall in property value. The court distinguished the firm’s delay in completing a task that could still be done from a permanent title defect, and said the damages period should, in principle, run from when a sale was probable to when the title problem was removed.
The court assessed attributable loss at €4 million, based on the difference between the likely €10 million sale in October 2007 and the €6 million offer made in August 2008, when the title issue had been resolved. It added €520,000 for increased capital gains tax and about €726,500, half the High Court’s interest figure, producing the substituted total of €5.2465 million. It did not determine unaddressed questions about registration costs or the value of Rosbeg’s occupation of the land.