Aberdeen Solicitors' Property Centre Ltd and Another v Director-General of Fair Trading
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judgment Date | 11 January 1996 |
| Date | 11 January 1996 |
| Court | Restrictive Practices Court |
Restrictive Practices Court (Scotland)
Before Lord Marnoch
Scots law - restrictive trade practices - provision of legal services exempt
Where number of solicitors' firms regularly used the services of a company to advertise properties being sold by them, which services were provided subject to rules made by the company after consultation with the regular users, among which was a rule against the advertisement of properties which were being marketed jointly by a solicitors' firm and an estate agents' firm, there was an "agreement or arrangement" between the solicitors' firms within the meaning of the Restrictive Trade Practices Act 1976, but that agreement and the restrictive rule related to the provision not of advertising services, but of legal services, and were therefore exempt under that Act.
Lord Marnoch, sitting in the Restrictive Practices Court (Scotland), so held, granting applications by the Aberdeen Solicitors' Property Centre Ltd and the Edinburgh Solicitors' Property Centre Ltd under section 26 of the 1976 Act, and ordering the rectification of the Register of Agreement maintained by the Director-General of Fair Trading by the removal therefrom of agreements relative to the applicants' property centres.
Mr Jonathan Mitchell, QC and Mr Colin Tyre for the first applicants; Mr Colin Campbell, QC and Mr Colin Tyre for the second applicants; Mr Matthew Clarke, QC and Mr Steven Woolman for the respondent.
LORD MARNOCH said that the applicants' businesses consisted primarily of the provision to solicitors of facilities for advertising heritable properties for sale.
In the Edinburgh case, firms of solicitors in the Edinburgh area who wished to use their services made an annual payment, and a fee for each property advertised. Solicitors outwith their areas could also do so on the same terms, or by paying a higher fee for each property advertised.
The users were not members of the company. They did not undertake that all properties which clients instructed to them to sell would be advertised through the centre.
Since 1991, the centre had accepted for advertisement only properties which were being marketed by solicitors, and not those which were being marketed on a joint agency basis by solicitors and estate agents. The circumstances of the Aberdeen Centre were not materially different.
Two questions arose. The first...
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