The Gazette 1940-44

reason of the definition of " owner " in Section 2 of that Act as " the person for the time being receiving the rack rent of the lands or premises in connection with which the word is used, whether on his own account or as agent or trustee for any other person, or who would so receive the same if the lands were let at a rack rent." In Watts v. Borough of Battersea (1929, 2.K.B.63) Mr. Watts, the solicitor for the personal repre sentatives of a testator, part of whose estate consisted of property let to occupying tenants, instructed Mr. Spicer, a builder who had collected the rents during the testator's lifetime, to continue to do so and to account to him on behalf of the actual owners from time to time. By a majority of the Court Mr. Watts was held liable as " own er," within the meaning of a statutory definition similar to that in the Public Health Act, 1878, to comply with a notice served by a public authority in respect of the premises. In a dis senting judgment Greer, L. J., expressed the view that Mr. Spicer who received the rents from the tenants was not the agent of the solicitor but rather of the actual owners who were entitled to the rents, the solicitor being a mere intermedi ary through whom the rents were passed on to the owners. The position, in so far as it affects solicitors, was alleviated to some extent by the recent decision in Northern Ireland in London derry Corporation v. Gillespie and Glass (1938, N.I.144). In that case the defendants were solicitors for the actual owners, all of whom resided abroad, of certain tenanted property, and the local authority relied on Watts v. Batter- sea Borough Council as establishing their liability as owners, within the meaning of the Public Health Act, 1878, to comply with a notice to abate a nuisance in respect of the property. The defendants proved that the rents collected by them, although admittedly received over an appreciable period, were all in respect of arrears and not current rents. Andrews, L. C. J., in delivering the judgment of the Court in favour of the defendants drew a distinction between the position of a solicitor acting as such and enforcing payment of arrears of rent and that of an estate agent collecting current rents, and held that in the former case the solicitor is not subject to the liability of an owner under the Act. This, he said, sufficiently distinguished the case from Watts v. Battersea Borough Council in which the solicitor received the current rents from the actual collector. His Lordship also, by way of obiter dictum, indicated his preference for the dissenting judgment of Greer, L. J., to that of the majority of the Court in Watts' case. There does not seem to be any more recent decision on

the matter in Ireland, but if the views of Andrews, L. C. J., and Greer, L. J., commended themselves to the Supreme Court the area of liability of solicitors who manage their clients' property

would be considerably reduced. Omission to ask for Costs

IT sometimes happens at the end of a complicated trial that Counsel, whose attention may be engaged by Aveightier matters, inadvertently omits to ask for the costs of some interlocutory motion which is not automatically included in the General Order for Costs. Order XXVIII Rule XI of the Rules of the Supreme Courb provides that clerical mistakes in judgments or orders, or errors arising therein from any accidental slip or omission, may at any time be corrected by the Court or a Judge on motion or summons without an appeal. This is an exception to the general rule that the Court cannot modify an Order after it has been perfected, in the absence of some extraneous element such as misrepresentation. In Fritz v. Hobson (1880. 14. Ch.D.542.) the Court overruled a submission that the rule did not apply to the accidental omission by Counsel to ask the Court for something which ought to have been provided for, saying that such an omission was very natural when Counsel's atten tion was directed to matters of greater importance. In the recent case of re Inchcape (1942 2 All E.R.157.) it was held that the corresponding English Rule, which is identical in terms with ours, entitled the Court to allow costs, incurred before the issue of the summons, of collecting evidence upon domicile and of obtaining Counsel's opinion, which Counsel had omitted to ask for as part of the general costs, previously directed to be taxed as between Solicitor and client and paid out of the estate. An accidental omission on the part of Counsel as the result of which the Judge does not make the Order as to costs that he would otherwise have made is an " accidental slip " within the meaning of the Rule. Banks as Executors THE President of the High Court is unofficially reported in the Irish Law Times and Solicitors' Journal of 19th June as having made an Order in the Goods of Bessie B. B. Mitchell deceased, authorising the issuing of a grant of probate in the name of a bank, registered as a body corporate in England but not in Eire, which was appointed Executor of the Will. The practice which has heretofore obtained in such cases has been to allow such a grant to be made only where the 17