No duty to remind client

Atkins v Dunn & Baker (a firm) CA SJ 5 March

The claimant’s father had instructed the defendant to draw up a new will which had the effect of leaving the entirety of his estate to her. The defendant prepared a draft will in accordance with the father’s instructions and sent it to him with a covering letter that made it clear that the document was merely a draft and that the defendant would prepare a final will upon receiving the father’s approval. The defendant received no further communication from the father, who died intestate three years later with the result that his estate passed to his widow. In dismissing the claimant’s case based on the contention that the solicitors had been negligent in failing to send a reminder to her father, the Court held that it was not inevitable that there was a duty upon a solicitor who had carried out instructions to prepare and send a draft will to a client to follow up that correspondence when the client had failed to reply. The defendant accepted that it was good practice to chase up clients who had not replied to correspondence but it had completed the task for which it had been instructed and it did not necessarily follow from retainer rules that in that situation there is a duty upon a solicitor to send a reminder. There were situations where a duty existed for a solicitor to send a reminder, but in the present case the judge had been entitled to conclude that it was for the father to act and the judge was correct to hold that the failure to send a reminder did not constitute negligence on the part of the defendant. There was no evidence to show that the father would have executed the will if the reminder had been sent.