The Gazette 1914-15

18

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