The son of distinguished physician Jean Weddell has won his appeal regarding the sale of his mother’s £1.25 million home.
In 2018, a legal battle was launched by Professor Christopher Gosden, who’s mother had ‘resolved’ to leave him her home, worth £1.25 million.
However, when Ms Weddell passed away in 2013, Gosden found that the house had been sold in 2010 and the estate was now worth just £5,000.
The house had been placed into an ‘estate protection scheme’ in 2004, with Gosden, his wife and Ms Weddell appointed as trustees, a step taken to minimise the inheritance tax that would be payable.
However, the house was sold by Ms Weddell following her civil partnership to former barrister Wendy Cook in 2007, who then became the beneficiary of a new will.
The original trial did not make a claim against the mother’s estate but instead sought to sue for negligence against the late mother’s solicitors, Halliwell Landau, who set up the trust in 2003.
Professor Gosden states that the solicitor should have placed a registration on the deeds to protect the house or the money from its sale, and ensured it was passed to him and his family.
During the first trial, Judge Mark Pelling found that the solicitor’s firm had been negligent for not placing a restriction on the register, however, he dismissed any claim against them for any loss.
He had stated that even if Professor Gosden and his wife had known about the planned sale of the house, Ms Weddell could have still been able to sell the house, and put the money towards her estate, if they had agreed.
This judgement was however overturned during the Court of Appeal case in the last week of January.
Lord Justice Patten stated that Judge Pelling had been “wrong to treat this as a claim based on a loss of a chance unless the starting point of the claimants had been that they would, as a matter of course, have consented to whatever Dr Weddell ultimately wished to do with the Property but would have attempted to persuade her to change her mind.” He also stated that Gosden and his wife had lost the “power to veto the sale.”
Patten LJ stated that the “analysis of what is likely to have occurred in 2010” was “a very slender basis for inferring that the claimants, as the judge put it, would have agreed with whatever Dr Weddell decided to do.” He continued that there had been “concern on the part of both claimants about Dr Weddell’s capacity and what they regarded as the malign influence of Ms Cook in the arrangement of Dr Weddell’s affairs.”
“the assumption which the judge makes that the claimants would readily have consented to whatever Dr Weddell wished to do with the Property because it originally belonged to her ignores the legal effect of the trust arrangements and assumes that the claimants should have regarded them and their duties as trustees as of no consequence or value. In fact, their evidence suggests the contrary.
“In this case, in my view, the necessary evidential foundation for his conclusions about consent was missing. The judge, it seems to me, fell into error by approaching the issue of causation in terms of whether Dr Weddell could have been persuaded to abandon a sale and of treating the consent of the claimants to what she decided as a given.
“The judge was therefore wrong in my view to have held that the defendants’ negligence had not caused the claimants any damage.”
It is unclear at present what the level of payout will be due.
Theresa Rosen Peacocke, barrister for Gosden, said outside court:
“The judge at trial didn’t make findings on quantum, so I think that unless the parties can agree a consequential order the Court of Appeal will remit to the trial judge.”
