Contract

ray giraffe

My friend wanted to buy a house and signed the contract.

His solicitor writes an official letter to him saying that the seller has also signed the contract of sale.

A couple of weeks later the solicitor now says that the contract was never and will not be signed by the seller.

Can the solicitor get away with this?

Peregrinus

I'm puzzled. Why is your friend's solicitor telling him that the vendor has or has not signed a contract?

And what exactly is your friend's solicitor "getting away with"? He is obviously going to be embarrassed to have to admit that his first letter was wrong and that the vendor had not signed, and your friend can ask for an explanation as to why his solicitor told him that he had signed when, in fact, he had not. But there may be an explanation.

mountsky

No trying to make light of the situation but this sounds like the whole 'Dermot Fahy' cock-up in Fair City,shocking stuff

Pat Mustard

ray giraffe wrote: »

His solicitor writes an official letter to him saying that the seller has also signed the contract of sale.

A couple of weeks later the solicitor now says that the contract was never and will not be signed by the seller.

Can the solicitor get away with this?

The facts are unclear, so it is impossible to do anything other than speculate.

A common special condition in a contract for the sale of land is that no contract is deemed to exist until the a deposit has been paid over, the contract signed by both parties and one part of the signed contract delivered to the purchaser's solicitor.

Perhaps it is the case that the purchaser's solicitor got word (from the auctioneer or otherwise) that the contract had been signed. However, if the above special condition was in place, and if the seller decided to withdraw from the sale prior to the return of one part signed contract, then no contract would be deemed to exist.

Perhaps the purchaser's solicitor was overeager and told his client that there was a signed contract, expecting to receive one part signed contract, which was never delivered. Therefore, perhaps he advised his client that there was a contract where none had existed, in fact.

Beyond conjecture as to what a reasonable explanation might possibly be for a solicitor making a mistake as to the existence of a contract, it is impossible to say why some solicitor said one thing and then said something entirely contradictory.

Can he get away with it? Hard to know, seeing as we don't know the full facts. Without the full facts, it is hard to see what harm the solicitor could have caused, apart from raising his client's expectations only to crush them.

It's not up to a purchaser's solicitor to ensure that a vendor signs a contract. The vendor will have his own solicitor. I don't see how a purchaser's solicitor could have control over such a situation.

At the very least, the purchaser should find out from the solicitor what happened. If necessary, he should make an appointment to see said solicitor. If he's not happy with the explanation, he should take advice somewhere else.