Cases - Cave v Robinson Jarvis & Rolf
Record details
- Name
- Cave v Robinson Jarvis & Rolf
- Date
- [2003]; [2002]
- Citation
- 1 AC 384, HL; UKHL 18
- Legislation
- Keywords
- Negligence in valuations and surveys - contract administration
- Summary
-
The defendants were a firm of solicitors who, in March 1989, acted on behalf of the claimant to obtain mooring rights for 100 years over land in the Isle of Wight which belonged to a third party company. In 1994, receivers of the company's bank informed the claimant that his mooring rights were no longer exercisable. In March 1996, the District Land Registry informed the claimant that his mooring rights were not entered on the Land Register. The claimant issued proceedings against the defendants in January 1998.
The House of Lords held that the claimant's action was statute-barred. Where a defendant is unaware of an error or of a failure to take reasonable care, then such conduct cannot be brought within Limitation Act 1980, section 32(2) so as to prevent time from running until the discovery of the same.
As Lord Millett put it (at 395):
'The maxim that ignorance of the law is no defence does not operate to convert a lawyer's inadvertent want of care into an intentional tort.'
However, if a party inadvertently acts in breach of contract or duty but later realises that he has done so and fails to inform the party who may be affected by such a breach, then that party is likely to be able to prove that such an error has been deliberately or recklessly concealed from him and rely on Limitation Act 1980, section 32 if the primary limitation period has already expired.