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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
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