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MAY, 1912]
The Gazette of the Incorporated Law Society of Ireland.
Treasury Chambers, Whitehall, S.W.,
28th March,
1912.
DEAR SIR,
I am desired by the Chancellor of the
Exchequer to acknowledge the receipt of
your letter forwarding a copy of a Memorial
submitted to his predecessor in 1907 by the
Council of the Incorporated Law Society of
Ireland, on
the subject Tof
the Annual
Certificate Duty payable by Solicitors
in
Ireland.
Yours faithfully,
(Signed),
J. T. DAVIES.
W. G. Wakely, Esq.,
Secretary,
The Incorporated Law Society of Ireland.
Treasury Chambers, Whitehall, S.W.,
15th April,
1912.
DEAR SIR,
With reference to your letter of the 27th
ultimo, asking for
the abolition of
the
Solicitors' Certificate Duty, I am desired by
the Chancellor of the Exchequer to say that
he regrets that he does not see his way to
accede
to your
request.
It would be
impossible to confine such action to Ireland,
and to abolish the duty throughout the
United Kingdom would entail a considerable
loss of revenue.
Yours faithfully,
(Signed), H. P. HAMILTON.
W. G. Wakely, Esq.,
Secretary,
The Incorporated Law Society of Ireland.
Recent Decisions affecting Solicitors.
(Notes of decisions, whether in reported or
unreported cases, of interest to Solicitors, are
invited from Members.)
COURT OF APPEAL (ENGLAND).
(Before Cozens-Hardy, M.
R., Fletcher
Moulton and Buckley,
L.JJ.)
Rakusen
v.
Ellis, Munday and Clarke.
March
19, 1912.
Solicitor after acting for one
party, acting for opponent in same dispute.
THIS was an appeal by the defendants, a
firm of Solicitors, from a decision of Mr.
Justice Warrington.
The plaintiff, in the case had moved for
an injunction to restrain the defendants from
acting as Solicitors for a company in certain
arbitration proceedings between the plaintiff
and the company, and for an order restrain–
ing the defendants from communicating to the
company confidential information obtained
from the plaintiff. The plaintiff was at one
time in the employment of the company, and
in June, 1911, the company gave notice to
determine his employment.
In September,
1911. the plaintiff consulted the defendants
with reference to this attempted dismissal of
himself, and he gave the particular partner
(Mr. Munday), who attended to his business,
confidential
information
relating'
to his
dispute with the company. In October, 1911,
the plaintiff changed his Solicitors, and
immediately afterwards he
issued a writ
against
the
company
for
damages
for
wrongful dismissal. That action was stayed
on the terms that the matter should be
referred to arbitration. This arbitration was
proceeded with,
and
the company had
recently changed its Solicitors, and retained
Messrs. Ellis, Munday and Clarke (the present
appellants) to act for it. Thus, these Solicitors
after acting first for the plaintiff in this
dispute, were now employed to act for the
defendants. But Mr. Clarke was the only
partner who was proposing to act for the
defendants, and Mr. Munday offered an
undertaking not to communicate any con–
fidential
information obtained
from
the
plaintiff to Mr. Clarke.
The matter came
before Mr. Justice Warrington on March 15,
1912. and he held that, apart from whether
there was any danger of the Solicitors com–
municating to the company any confidential
information given to them by the plaintiff,
the Court ought not to allow a firm of
Solicitors which had acted for a plaintiff in
a particular cause or matter to act sub–
sequently as Solicitors for the defendants ;
and he granted an injunction accordingly.
The defendants appealed, and the Court of
Appeal allowed the appeal.
The Master of the Rolls, in the course of
his judgment, said that he did not doubt for
a moment there might be cases where the
circumstances were such that a Solicitor
ought not to be allowed to act for the other
side because he could not clear his mind of
information' given to him confidentially by
his former client; but the Court ought to
treat each of these cases as a matter of
substance on
the particular
facts,
and