Professional Negligence Solicitor in UK Law

It seems to me, however, that there is more substance in the second version of the appellant's case under this ground. In the Queen Elizabeth's School case a solicitor was asked to advise the school on the meaning of a restrictive covenant which the solicitor had negotiated. In subsequent legal proceedings in professional negligence against the solicitor the court was not asked to rule on the meaning of the covenant but only on whether there was real scope for doubt as to what it meant.

The waiver can only extend to matters which are relevant to an issue in the proceedings and, privilege apart, admissible in evidence. There is no waiver for a roving search into anything else in which the solicitor or any other solicitor may have happened to have acted for the clients. But the waiver must go far enough not merely to entitle the plaintiff to establish his cause of action but to enable the defendant to establish a defence to the cause of action if he has one.

A party cannot deliberately subject a relationship to public scrutiny and at the same time seek to preserve its confidentiality. He cannot pick and choose, disclosing such incidents of the relationship as strengthen his claim for damages and concealing from forensic scrutiny such incidents as weaken it. He cannot attack his former solicitor and deny the solicitor the use of materials relevant to his defence.

Where an action is dismissed for want of prosecution the fault must lie either with the plaintiff or with his solicitors or both. If it were a matter which the judge ought to take into account in deciding whether to dismiss the action, the court upon an interlocutory application in an action between different parties would have to embark upon what in effect would be the trial of an action by the plaintiff against his actual or former solicitor for professional negligence.

Not only would there be available to him any advice or material which had been given or obtained by his solicitor in support of his case in the dismissed action, but the principle of Armory v. Delamirie would apply and would impose upon the solicitor the onus of satisfying the Court that the plaintiff's claim in the dismissed action would not have succeeded had it been prosecuted with diligence.

It means knowing with sufficient confidence to justify embarking on the preliminaries to the issue of a writ, such as submitting a claim to the proposed defendant, taking advice, and collecting evidence: 'suspicion, particularly if it is vague and unsupported, will indeed not be enough, but reasonable belief will normally suffice'. In other words, the claimant must know enough for it to be reasonable to begin to investigate further.

Although the categories of cases in which such special relationship can be held to exist are not closed, as yet only two categories have been identified, viz. (1) where there is a fiduciary relationship and (2) where the defendant has voluntarily answered a question or tenders skilled advice or services in circumstances where he knows or ought to know that an identified plaintiff will rely on his answers or advice.