1. ) MOHANNA A/L RENGASAMY 2. ) THE LAW OFFICE OF MOHANNA & CO. v KRISHNA KUMAR A/L KALIANAN

Case Significance

Illustrates a solicitor's liability for professional negligence in a failed conveyancing transaction and the deference an appellate court pays to a trial court's findings on negligence, causation and loss: such findings will not be disturbed unless plainly wrong or infected by an error of principle.

This High Court decision at Shah Alam is an appeal in a professional-negligence claim against a firm of solicitors and its partner. The respondent had appointed the appellants — a law firm and the partner sued as such — as solicitors to act in the sale and purchase of a property, and the transaction failed. The respondent sued for professional negligence, and the Sessions Court, after trial, allowed the claim; the appellants appealed. The central appellate question was whether the appellate court should interfere with the Sessions Court's findings of fact — whether the trial judge had erred in principle, misapprehended the facts, or failed to take relevant matters into account, so as to warrant appellate intervention. Appellate courts are slow to disturb a trial court's findings of fact, particularly where the trial judge has had the advantage of seeing and hearing the witnesses, and will interfere only where the findings are plainly wrong or infected by an error of principle. The High Court examined the Sessions Court's findings on the solicitors' conduct of the conveyancing retainer, the losses the respondent suffered, and the causal link between the two. It held that the findings — that the appellants had been negligent, that the losses were established without the need for further proof, and that the negligence directly caused those losses — were well supported by the evidence and consistent with the applicable law, so that there was no error warranting appellate intervention. It dismissed the appeal with costs of RM15,000 and upheld the Sessions Court's decision. Delivered by Jamhirah Ali J, the judgment is a useful illustration of a solicitor's liability for professional negligence in a failed conveyancing transaction, and of the deference an appellate court pays to a trial court's findings of fact on negligence, causation and loss. The decision confirms that a firm of solicitors and the partner conducting the retainer may both be answerable for a negligent conveyance, and that where the trial court has found the losses proved and directly caused by the negligence, an appellate court will not substitute a different view of the evidence.