Solicitors charged €340k too much

Two solicitors overcharged by €340,000 for their work on administering the estate of a woman who left €14m to the St Vincent de Paul charitable society, the High Court has heard.

Sat, 13 Jun, 2015 - 01:00

Ann O’Loughlin

Gerard Williams Sandys and Bryan C Brophy, of Sandys and Brophy, Sea Rd, Galway, yesterday failed in a challenge to a decision by the Law Society to refer a complaint about the alleged overcharging to society’s Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal.

Mr Justice Nicholas Kearns dismissed their challenge and he affirmed a July 2013 decision of the Law Society’s complaints and client relations committee (CCRC) to refer to the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal a complaint about the two solicitors’ alleged failure to send to the Vincent de Paul an estimate of their costs for administering the estate.

The judge said Sandys and Brophy acted as solicitor for Maureen O’Connell who died in May 1998 and left an estate, the principal asset of which was O’Connells Bar in Eyre Square, Galway.

The solicitors had to institute legal proceedings to prove the will and condemn a subsequent will and that case was settled in 2013. A separate case also had to be take to get possession of the pub and this was settled in 2006 with the premises selling for €14m. In 2011, a solicitor for the St Vincent de Paul complained to the Law Society two solicitors had charged excessive fees for their work on the estate and had also failed to furnish an estimate of fees.

The society’s CCRC asked the solicitors for detailed schedules of their fees charged. Over a number of months there were various proposals about how the matter might be resolved.

However, by July 2012 the CCRC decided to bring in its legal costs accountant to look at the complaint. That accountant delivered a report which found there was an overcharge of €340,000.

Mr Justice Kearns found that while the solicitors had a right to bring judicial review proceedings, they had, after the matter had “dragged on for over two years”, sought to submit their own accountant’s report on the eve of a CCRC meeting to deal with the complaint.