The Gazette 1958-61

A. vendor of rent-restricted property which has become vacant between the dates of the contract and of completion is under a duty to consult the purchaser before reletting before completion of the contract. After the appellants had entered into an agreement to sell to the respondents property in Nairobi con sisting of three shops let to three tenants at rents controlled under the local rent restriction legislation, one of the tenants surrendered his tenancy before completion of the contract. The appellants, without consulting the respondents, relet the vacated shop on the same day to another tenant at the same maximum controlled rent. The evidence established that the value of the premises with the vacated shop unlet was Shs. 18,000 f- more than with the shop let. The appellants being unwilling to compensate the respondents in respect of the depreciation in value of the premises resulting from the reletting, the re spondents claimed specific performance of the agree ment and compensation by way of an abatement of the purchase price for the loss resulting from the reletting :—Held by the Privy Council (Lord Reid, Lord Cohen and Lord Somervell) affirming the Court of Appeal for East Africa that the vendors' obligations were defined in section 5 5 (i) (

not endorsed by the firm and the notice was not published. Mr. Justice Vaisey dismissed this motion by Richmond Film Productions for the committal of a member of a firm of solicitors, for alleged contempt of Court in failing to procure the pub lication of a notice which a partner in the firm, had agreed through counsel to give an undertaking to publish in the Press. Sir Lionel Heald, for the Law Society, said that in view of some uncertainty in the public mind it was desirable to make it clear what the position of soli citors was. Anything a solicitor did in his capacity as a solicitor, wherever he did it, rendered him amenable to the discipline of the Court. In Myers v. Elman ((1940) A.C. 282) Lord Atkin had said that from time immemorial judges had ex ercised a disciplinary jurisdiction over solicitors in cases of misconduct. Solicitors were now subject to two concurrent jurisdictions; judicial action by a solicitor should always be dealt with by the Court, while extra-judicial action by a solicitor should nor mally be dealt with by the Disciplinary Committee of the Law Society, an independent statutory body, with appeal to the Divisional Court of the Queen's Bench Division. As a general rule the maxim pacta servanda sunt applied but there must be some limit to this in cases of fraud, mistake or duress. The Court of Appeal had recently decided, in Hughes v. Hughes ((1958) 3. W.L.R. 500) that the Court had no juris diction to relieve a solicitor of an extra-judicial undertaking given by another solicitor. His Lordship said that no officer of his Court ought to sign a document and repudiate it. But there was an obligation on him to protect his officers from embarrassment and, if they got into difficulty, to help them. Mr. Justice Vaisey, giving judgment, said that this was a motion which he believed, and sincerely hoped, was unprecedented. After the writ was issued on December 12, 1958, certain publicity was given on behalf of the plaintiff, Mr. Schuller, to which the defendant company, Richmond Film Productions, took exception. A meeting took place on January 16, 1959, between counsel for the film company and a partner in the firm, as a result of which a most extraordinary document was produced. It was headed, "In the matter of the action Schuller v. Richmond Film Productions" and then "In the matter of an application on behalf of the defendants . . . for an order for committal against the solicitor for contempt of Court." In fact there had never been any application on the part of the defendants to commit the solicitor for contempt of court and the heading was completely wrong. It was initialled as a "minute" and signed by counsel for the company and, curiously enough, by