The High Court has ordered solicitor Francis Mc Ardle to return Kay Conroy’s title deeds for Windwood Lodge, also known as Brighton Villa, on Carrick Road in Dundalk. The court held that no retaining lien over the deeds could have arisen while Mc Ardle held them in trust for the mortgage lender.
Ms Justice Dunne’s judgment, delivered on 16 December 2005, concerned Conroy’s application to recover the deeds. Mc Ardle had acted as her solicitor from September 1988 until January 2001. In 1994, he obtained the deeds from I.I.B. Home Loans in connection with a remortgage. The judgment records that his undertaking to the lender required him to hold the title documents in trust for it.
When their solicitor-client relationship ended in January 2001, both signed a letter recording an agreement that Conroy would pay £3,000 during that year in settlement of outstanding fees, costs and outlay. The letter also referred to handing over files. Conroy later withheld the payment, saying she did so because Mc Ardle had not delivered the files. Mc Ardle argued that the agreement had been repudiated and claimed a solicitor’s lien over the deeds. He said €61,710.24 was owed and had brought separate summary proceedings to recover that amount.
The judgment records competing accounts of the Law Society’s involvement. Mc Ardle said the Society had dismissed Conroy’s complaint and accepted that he could retain her file under a lien. Conroy relied on correspondence indicating that the Society would not continue dealing with the matter if the summary proceedings had been served. The judge did not determine the separate fee claim.
Ms Justice Dunne considered whether a lien could arise over the deeds, including after the mortgage was discharged in January 2004. She concluded that a lien arises by operation of law and could not come into existence after the mortgage had been discharged. At the points when it was argued a lien might have arisen over the disputed £3,000 payment, Mc Ardle still held the deeds expressly in trust for I.I.B. Home Loans. The court held that this trust was inconsistent with a lien over the deeds.
The judge also said that, when the retainer ended in January 2001, any lien could extend only to the £3,000 figure recorded in the letter. She expressed no view on the validity of Mc Ardle’s separate claim for €61,710.24. The court concluded that Conroy was entitled to the return of the title deeds.