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VULTURES BLANDY AND BLANDY SET TO BANKRUPT Mr BEACH |
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You would think that going to see the senior partner Simon Dimmock of Blandy and Blandy solicitors in Reading would put you in safe hands. When Danny Beach consulted the firm over a complex and harrowing planning issue with Runnymede Borough Council, he felt confident the firm would be acting in his interests. The Council served Egham farmer Beach with 48 planning enforcement notices in 2007, and at a cost of £1000 per notice to appeal, he was looking at large appeal costs of £48,000 and only a month in which to appeal.
Under these daunting circumstances, Beach appointed Blandy and Blandy. There followed a strange series of events in the run up to the 2009 Public Enquiry – where it was not clear whether Blandy and Blandy were really acting in Beach’s interests, or just operating a fee-generating machine. Blandy’s started a dialogue with a property investor who was interested in buying Beach’s land. They then appointed a barrister to represent him who was not only junior to the prosecuting barrister, but also in the same chambers.
After a 9-day hearing, Beach lost the case – having been weakly represented by the inexperienced barrister appointed by Blandy’s. When he challenged the effectiveness of the legal representation provided by Blandy’s, they denied having let him down or having a conflict of interest due to their dealings with the property investor who wanted Beach’s land. They refused to accept that their £200,000 bill was unreasonable and disproportionate to the degree to which they actually helped Beach.
But here is the basic difficulty in the legal profession: a solicitor (or barrister) is paid to act for you – irrespective of whether he does so in accordance with your instructions; irrespective of whether he has a conflict of interest; irrespective of whether you win or lose your case. And you will pay him by the hour. And he has no incentive to win (or lose) your case quickly. In fact, he has every incentive to drag matters out for as long as possible, because it makes no difference to him whether you win or lose. As in the Dorgan case, Blandy and Blandy just kept billing until they bled Danny Beach dry.
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VULTURES BLANDY AND BLANDY SET TO DEVOUR ESTATE |
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Dying is bad enough. Dying without a will is even worse. Bad news for loved ones left behind. Good news for the solicitors profiting handsomely from the inevitable squabble. Excellent news for the administrator who controls the estate. When Rupert Dorgan died in 2005, he did not leave a will and an administrator was appointed to “take care of” the estate. Graham Benwell of Blandy and Blandy solicitors in Reading took on the task. He set about taking care of running up a healthy amount of costs, without ever getting near finishing the administration of the estate. Once in place, the administrator is free to charge what he wants, and the beneficiaries have no way of stopping him running up unlimited costs. Once the taxman and solicitors are paid off, the heirs are lucky if there is anything left - except misery, acrimony and the depletion of their inheritance. In fact there is no incentive for the administrator to conclude his work – as long as there are some assets in the estate, he can just keep billing and billing.
The system is stacked in favour of the administrator unfortunately, as his interests come before the beneficiaries’. Graham Benwell was responsible for valuing the Dorgan estate, and his fee was originally estimated to be a percentage of the value of the estate. Ergo, the greater the estate value, the more the administrator can charge. The perceptive reader will have spotted the big danger here: the greater the value of the estate, the greater the inheritance tax. So the beneficiaries lose out twice: once to the administrator and once to the taxman. The system is wide open to abuse and injustice for unscrupulous legal practitioners who can milk an estate, and are accountable to nobody.
Having enjoyed years of unhindered costs billing at the expense of Paul and Laurenne Dorgan, Graham Benwell of Blandy and Blandy is now finally being challenged and asked to step down as administrator to save the cost of having him forcibly removed. But he is clinging on for dear life; refusing to correct the values of the estate so the tax can be reduced; refusing to give a breakdown of the costs he is claiming – which are more than twice his original quote. He is also trying to charge for putting his mistakes right, and for providing details of his charges.
The Legal Ombudsman and the Solicitors Regulation Authority are notoriously feeble when it comes to disciplining rogue solicitors who fail to observe either justice or their clients’ rights. But the power of the media and the internet is now set to expose Graham Benwell of Blandy and Blandy and the rottenness of the routine greed and negligence which leaves estates picked as clean as a bleached skeleton after the vultures have had their fill.
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