Professional negligence; setting aside a settlement; capacity ‘The judgment emphasises two high thresholds that apply to a claimant in seeking to overturn a first instance decision in a professional negligence case.‘ This is an interesting professional negligence case arising from a settled personal injury claim which is useful to serious injury practitioners not because it …
Continue reading "Case report: Dunhill v W Brook & Co [2018] EWCA Civ 505"
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Huw Miles looks at issues arising and procedure when a client may lack capacity to conduct financial proceedings ‘Capacity is both specific to every particular issue and every instant in time: it can even be person specific, so that what seems a simple concept can quickly develop into something else entirely.’ Liberty is a fundamental …
Continue reading "Capacity: Hard decisions"
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Wills & Trusts Law Reports | July/August 2014 #141This was an application by a local authority property and affairs deputy seeking a direction whether to authorise a gift MS wished to make. MS was a member of the Church of Latter Day Saints (the church) and wished to donate £6,832 to the church as a tithe. This sum represented 10% of a recent inheritance. RS was MS’s mother and strongly opposed to the donation. MS made his own application seeking declarations that he had capacity to litigate, capacity to make a tithe, capacity to manage his own property and affairs and capacity to execute a LPA for property and affairs.
MS...
Jim Tindal summarises mental capacity, CPR 21 and Dunhill v Burgin [2014] ‘The issue at the heart of Dunhill was: what “claim” must the claimant have capacity to commence? The claim which it was wrongly believed at the time the claimant had, or the (much bigger) claim they in fact had unknown to anyone at …
Continue reading "Capacity: When does a settlement settle nothing?"
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Deirdre Goodwin provides analysis and considers the effect of a finding of incapacity to conduct proceedings upon the status of settlements not approved under CPR r21 ‘The re-assertion of the principle that an apparently fully informed and properly advised settlement will be treated as void if a claimant is retrospectively considered to be a protected …
Continue reading "Capacity: Test of capacity to conduct proceedings"
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Wills & Trusts Law Reports | November 2013 #134Mrs Constance Rose Simon died on 15 January 2009 at the age of 91. She was the widow of Mr R W Simon, with whom she had four children: namely Jonathan, Robert, Hilary and David. David predeceased his mother on 1 November 2004.
Mrs Simon’s estate consisted of her house in St John’s Wood, London (valued at £1.75m), a flat in Westcliffe on Sea (valued at £262,500), savings and shares (worth £55,000), some land in Malta and 16 shares in R W Simon Ltd (the company).
By Mrs Simon’s will dated 23 March 1978, she had left her entire estate to her four children i...
Araba Taylor considers the affairs of the incapacitated in the first of two articles The test of the mental capacity of a litigant either to bring litigation or to commence civil proceedings, without the need for a litigation friend, depends on the specific transaction involved. Clients without capacity present client care issues for all practitioners, …
Continue reading "Client Care: Clients without capacity – taking instructions"
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Deirdre Goodwin considers when neurological advice should be sought Where a person sought to rely on an unsoundness of mind, he had to show that such incapacity had been known to his opponent. The recent case of Dunhill v Burgin highlights the risks of settling cases where the claimant lacks capacity and a litigation friend …
Continue reading "Capacity: Masterman-Lister and Bailey v Warren revisited"
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Wills & Trusts Law Reports | November 2011 #114The claimants were the step-children of Arthur Ronald Towns (Mr Towns). Mr Towns had commenced the claim on 5 October 2007 and had died on 3 June 2008. The claimants were substituted for Mr Towns on 3 September 2008 as executors of his estate. Repayment was sought of sums totalling £127,000 said to have been withdrawn by the first defendant (Henry Pulbrook) from an account in the joint names of Mr Towns and his late wife Edith Anne Towns (Mrs Towns). The claimants were Mrs Towns’ children from her first marriage.
Each of the claimants and the defendants was a descendant of ...
