The Gazette 1944-46

was payable only introduced actually purchased the property or entered into a legally binding purchase agreement. The English King's Bench Division decided in favour of the defendant, Hilbery, J., said that the matter had been settled by previous decisions. The language of the contract had been chosen by the plaintiff and the position could be summed up in a sen tence : where a party chooses to say "my com mission will be payable on my introducing a purchaser" it means that such commission will be payable only when someone he has introduced has actually purchased. He quoted authority to show that there was no room for the introduction of an implied term in the contract binding the principal not to refuse to complete the sale to the party introduced by the agent. Such an im plied term could be introduced only under the compulsion of some urgent necessity. Neither could the plaintiff recover on a quantum meruit, where, as in the present case, he had reduced the terms of the contract into writing and they had been accepted by the defendant. The legal position, as clearly stated in the decided cases, seems to be one in which the law does not follow closely what the layman at least will regard as the path of equity. It is open, however, to the agent in choosing the language of his agreement to protect himself by express stipulations as to the events in which his right to commission shall accrue; and there seems little doubt that an extension of the ordinary grammatical meaning assigned by the Courts to the word "purchaser" would intro duce an undesirable element of uncertainty into the law. (Jones v. Lowe 61 T.L.R. 53). Sec also Luxor (Eastbourne) Ltd. v. Cooper (1941 A.C. 108). OBITUARY. MR. HENRY H. GRACE, Solicitor, died at his residence, 62 Ranelagh Road, Dublin, on 14th December, 1944. Mr. Grace served his apprenticeship with the late Peter C. McGough, Dublin, was admitted in Trinity Sittings, 1891, and practised at 35 Dame Street, Dublin, up to the year 1897. He entered the Estate Duty Office. Dublin, and was Controller from 1923 to 1935, when he retired. if the person MR. WILLIAM DORGAN, Solicitor, died at Cork, on 28th December, 1944. Mr. Dorgan served his apprenticeship with the late Mr. Henry B. Julian, Cork, was admitted in Trinity Sittings, 1891, and practised at Cork under the style of Burke and Dorgan.

On the construction of the statute the Court held, following Dallow v. Garrold, that once it had been conceded that a composite amount consisting of a judgment debt plus costs constituted property recovered or preserved within the meaning of the section, it followed that a judgment for costs alone came equallv within it. On the question of the grounds on which the Court should exercise its discretion to make a charging order, the Master of the Rolls said that if, prima facie, a solicitor is entitled to the order, some good reason must be shown for depriving him of it. He did not propose to assert, as a matter of principle, that the discre tion should be exercised against the solicitor only in cases where some conduct of his own. made it unjust to give him the relief asked for, but he thought he was entitled to say that, in a case where no conduct of the solicitor was involved, it would require very exceptional circumstances to justify the Court in refusing to the solicitor that security in respect of the fruits of his labour to which under the section he was, prima facie, entitled. Commission "on introducing a purchaser." QUESTIONS sometimes arise as to the right of a house-agent to commission on the sale of a house by private treaty when he has done all that was incumbent on him in introducing a person who is willing to purchase, but the sale has gone off through no fault of the agent. In a recent English case the plaintiff was a house agent who had entered into a verbal contract, confirmed by letter, to endeavour to find a purchaser for the defend ant's house. The letter continued : "In the event of my introducing a purchaser I look to you for the payment of the usual commission in accord ance with the scale fixed by the Auctioneers' and Estate Agents' Institute of the United Kingdom." The price originally fixed by the vendor was ,€3,7;50 but she subsequently reduced it to £3,150. The plaintiff introduced a person willing to purchase the property at the stipulated price and the deposit was dub/paid. The defend ant's solicitors sent to the intending purchasers' solicitors a draft contract for approval, but before the contract had been signed by the intending purchaser he received a letter from the defendant stating that as the result of domestic difficulties she was withdrawing the property from sale. The plaintiff applied to the defendant for payment of commission, which was refused; and he thereupon instituted proceedings claiming that in introducing a willing purchaser he had done all that was required of him under the contract of agency. The defendant contended that the commission

60