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The Gazette of the Incorporated Law Society of Ireland.
[JUNE, 1914
during the half year of general interest to the
profession was the question of the scale of
costs payable to solicitors for making title
to lands compulsorily acquired under the
Labourers Acts.
You will recollect that the Local Government
Board are empowered by the Act of 1906 to
make rules fixing our fees after consultation
with the President of this Society, and in the
month of February I received a request from
the Board to meet them relative to the draft
of a new order which the Board proposed to
make in substitution of the rule fixing the
scale contained in the Labourers (Ireland)
Order, 1912. This draft order proposed very
serious reductions in the already meagre
schedule of fees prescribed by the order of
1912. Without going too much into detail I
may state that it seriously reduced every item
in the scale of fees and cut down by 50 per
cent, the optional bulk fees for deducing title,
which you wiL recollect began with
£2 2s.
where the compensation payable did not
exceed
£60.
I
had two conferences with the
Board, by whom
I was
received most
courteously, and the representations of the
Council made through me were given full
consideration.
As a result of these con
ferences the more important items in the
scale of fees were restored and so was the
optional scale of fees as contained in the order
of 1912, and a new fee of £1 Is. was intro
duced in
cases where
the compensation
payable does not exceed
£25.
The most
satisfactory feature of the new order, a copy
of which you will find in the March number
of our GAZETTE, is the omission from it of the
rule providing the compulsory fixed fee of
10s. 6d. for deducing title to land taken from an
occupier—a rule against which the Council had
always protested. An optional minimum fee
of
£1
Is. is now open to solicitors, whether
acting for owner or occupier, and the Local
Government Board are reasonably anxious
lhat this optional fee of
£1
Is. should be accep
ted b}' solicitors for occupiers in all but very
complicated cases. But while the Council are
prepared to recommend solicitors to make use
of these optional fees in every case possible,
we are not prepared to recommend either
District Councils or their solicitors to act on
the advice contained in the Memorandum
dated 4th April last, issued by the Local
Government Board
to District Councils,
which probably some of you have seen. This
Memorandum advises District Councils to
dispense with the examination of title to the
occupation interest in every case, and to pay
the compensation money to whomsoever may
happen to be in actual occupation, relying on
the indemnity sections contained in the
Labourers Acts. Any such practice would
probably lead to complication and injustice,
and I can only say that the following further
recommendation contained in the Memo
randum is astonishing :—
" Again, in the case of holdings purchased
under the Land Purchase Acts which are now
held by the owners subject to purchase
annuities,
the abstract of
title obviously
should not go back beyond the Vesting Order
of the Irish Land Commission in relation to
the lands."
That is to say, that when the Land Com
mission have vested a holding in a purchasing
tenant " subject to equities " these equities
are to be disregarded in paying over com
pensation money.
It seems
to me that
solicitors for District Councils may possibly
undertake a heavy personal responsibility,
if they act on any such recommendation.
We also succeeded in doing good work in
reference to the costs of proceedings under the
Housing of the Working Classes Acts.
The system under which
the arbitrator
appointed under that Act, against whose
decision
there
is
no
appeal,
arbitrarily
measured the costs of solicitors for claimants,
gave rise to considerable dissatisfaction, and
I am glad to be able to report that the
arbitrator, when approached, adopted sug
gestions made to him by the Council that he
should appoint a solicitor to act as his
assessor in relation to the costs of claimants,
and that he should, with his assessor, consider
these costs in the presence of the respective
solicitors for the parties. Another matter of
importance which came before us during the
half-year was an application by the English
Law Society, forwarded through the English
Lord Chancellor, to the rule-making authority
over here to have the Irish Supreme Court
rule dealing with
Service out of the Jurisdiction
altered by striking out Sub-section (f), Rule
(1) of Order XL, so as to abrogate the power