A leading planning barrister has been ordered to pay £385,000 after being successfully sued for pulling out of his purchase of a mansion.
Robert Griffiths QC, the joint head of 4-5 Gray's Inn Square, agreed to buy Laughton Manor for £3.6 million from brick tycoon Alan Hardy in 2010. Described in Amanda Tipples' High Court judgment as "beautiful", the mansion came with a walled garden, a cottage, a helipad, 12 acres - but only a small lake and, unfortunately, extensive dry rot.
Griffiths may be lauded in his Gray's Inn profile as "very commercially astute", but he was putty in the estate agent's hands. Despite Griffiths's wife smelling damp on a tour of the house, when the agent told him (on April's Fool's Day) that he might lose the property if he didn't exhange immediately, he agreed within the hour and paid a deposit of £150,000. Without waiting for the survey, or to exchange on his own home in Hampstead.
When Griffiths couldn't shift his London pile, he asked to delay the completion date for Laughton. Hughes agreed, so long as Griffiths paid its running costs of £10k a month. In the meantime Griffiths got the results of his survey and discovered that he had won Crap Mansion Bingo, with rising damp, penetrating damp, wet rot, dry rot and quite possibly damp rot too. When he refused to complete the purchase, Hughes sued.
Tipples didn't think much of Griffiths' performance as a witness in the High Court. She said that Griffiths "found it difficult to simply answer the question put," because "he could not resist arguing his case". He was also unable to dodge the fact that he'd been tripped up by that pesky caveat emptor law thing. Tipples ruled that Hughes could keep the £150,000 deposit and ordered Griffiths to pay another £235,000 in damages for breach of contract. Which would probably have sorted out a lot of the rot.
Tip Off ROF
Robert Griffiths QC, the joint head of 4-5 Gray's Inn Square, agreed to buy Laughton Manor for £3.6 million from brick tycoon Alan Hardy in 2010. Described in Amanda Tipples' High Court judgment as "beautiful", the mansion came with a walled garden, a cottage, a helipad, 12 acres - but only a small lake and, unfortunately, extensive dry rot.
Griffiths may be lauded in his Gray's Inn profile as "very commercially astute", but he was putty in the estate agent's hands. Despite Griffiths's wife smelling damp on a tour of the house, when the agent told him (on April's Fool's Day) that he might lose the property if he didn't exhange immediately, he agreed within the hour and paid a deposit of £150,000. Without waiting for the survey, or to exchange on his own home in Hampstead.
 |
Griffiths, in what looks suspiciously like a Garrick Club tie, and Laughton Manor, in what looks suspiciously like a fresh paint job |
When Griffiths couldn't shift his London pile, he asked to delay the completion date for Laughton. Hughes agreed, so long as Griffiths paid its running costs of £10k a month. In the meantime Griffiths got the results of his survey and discovered that he had won Crap Mansion Bingo, with rising damp, penetrating damp, wet rot, dry rot and quite possibly damp rot too. When he refused to complete the purchase, Hughes sued.
Tipples didn't think much of Griffiths' performance as a witness in the High Court. She said that Griffiths "found it difficult to simply answer the question put," because "he could not resist arguing his case". He was also unable to dodge the fact that he'd been tripped up by that pesky caveat emptor law thing. Tipples ruled that Hughes could keep the £150,000 deposit and ordered Griffiths to pay another £235,000 in damages for breach of contract. Which would probably have sorted out a lot of the rot.
 |
The RollOnFriday Firm of Year 2015 survey is now open. And so is the survey for in-house lawyers. Please take part. |
Comments
11
2