Lillian's Story
A true and unfortunate tale of a Jamaican living abroad who simply wanted to sell her home, but ran into all sorts of problems. Happily, we were able to save the day.
Lillian Duggan moved to Canada from Jamaica in 1985. She originally planned to move back to Jamaica and retire to the three bedroom house left to her by her mother, but after 15 years in Ottawa, she made the hard decision to sell her mother’s home. She contacted Joseph Johnson, an old friend who had become a lawyer, to see if he could help her sell the house; a property located in beautiful Negril on the western end of the island.
It took 15 years for her to receive the proceeds from the sale.
“It felt like a great relief to be using somebody I knew and felt like I could trust. I couldn’t have been more wrong.”
She sent him all the papers and was told that he had everything under control: he would find the realtor, find purchasers, and handle everything. She could go about life without worrying over the transaction. “He said it would all be done in a few months. It was a great relief to be using somebody I knew and felt like I could trust. I couldn’t have been more wrong,” she said. In March 2000, shortly after hiring Johnson, a young couple agreed to buy the house. Paperwork was signed. Johnson reported that the deposit was paid, and everything looked fine.
Lillian had used Johnson to sell the houses adjacent to the current property that she also owned, and while he had taken longer than she thought to be usual, he did complete the sales. However, shortly after Johnson had reported that the agreement was signed and the deposit paid, she had trouble reaching him. Whenever she called, she received little or no reply. With the distance between Ottawa and Jamaica, her inability to reach Johnson over the phone left her with few options.
“… shortly after Johnson had reported that the agreement was signed and the deposit paid, she had trouble reaching him. Whenever she called, she received little or no reply.”
She made phone calls and sent more letters, emails and faxes in a continued effort to receive updates on the sale. Meanwhile Johnson dodged, evaded, and outright ignored Lillian’s attempts to reach him.
What she didn’t realize was that Johnson was working both sides of the sale. He was acting as her lawyer in the process – but also as the lawyer for the young couple purchasing her house. He also refused to take their calls or answer their questions. Lillian only found out after over three years of silence and evasion when the house purchasers contacted her directly in 2003 – when she and the purchasers attempted to sit Johnson down in July to figure everything out, but he refused to cooperate.
She took action shortly after. She contacted the General Legal Council – the Jamaican lawyers’ disciplinary body – to file a complaint against Johnson. The complaint went to the disciplinary committee. In spite of several adjournments made by the committee to accommodate Johnson’s excuses for non-attendance, Johnson did not attend a single hearing. The first time he sent another lawyer in his place. After that, he completely failed to appear. The panel found him negligent, and he was eventually disbarred from practicing, but Lillian had wasted time and money dealing with him – and still had more trials ahead of her.
By the time the deal was done and Johnson punished for his negligence, Lillian had lost nearly CDN$60,000 from fees, expenses and currency devaluations – not to mention the time wasted dealing with Johnson and trying to get the job done.”
“I personally would not wish this experience on my enemy and I cannot thank the Nicholson Phillips team enough for sticking with me through all of this.”
Realtors had been paid commissions from the deposit money (which had, unusually, come in three instalments instead of a single lump sum), and an unresolved property boundary issue with one of the previously sold houses kept her from closing the sale, collecting her monies, and being done with affair. She had originally asked Johnson to handle the boundary issue before he sold the house – and Johnson, for five years, did not disclose that he had not done the job. Finally, in 2005, Lillian hired our law firm to assist her in her efforts with the General Legal Council and to get rent from and close the deal with the purchasers.
In 2005 the General Legal Council forced Johnson to pay compensation to Lillian – which included the rent he should have charged and collected from the purchasers.
That should have been the end of an already painful process, but even with Johnson dealt with, there were more troubles to come. Given the passage of time Lillian wanted to nullify the original contract, receive a fresh appraisal for the house, and negotiate a new price, only to learn that the deal Johnson had drawn up for her locked the house into the 1999 figure and made any change impossible. Closing the deal took another nine years. A complicated international legal process, natural disasters, and evasive purchasers made finishing the process a long and painful event. Resolving the boundary issue required the involvement of the neighbouring land owners, which presented fresh challenges.
The young couple who acquired the neighbouring property from Lillian some years ago had gone through a rough patch in their relationship and separated. The husband, Smith, apparently now re-married, had illegally relocated from Jamaica to the Bahamas, which further complicated the issue. He wasn’t eager to be found, and the boundary encroachment was, not unsurprisingly, not a priority of his. With Lillian’s help we spent two years tracking him down – and finally got him to sign the papers rectifying the encroachment. But that wasn’t the end of the matter. During the hiatus the husband had bought out the wife’s share in the property which necessitated a change in the documents. We had to draft fresh documents for Smith to sign. At this point Smith vanished. Again. Once more years went by, and amidst the efforts to locate Smith and extract rent from the purchasers, Jamaica was struck by Hurricane Nicole in 2010. Progress slowed for months.
It wasn’t until later that year that Smith was found and signed the documents to rectify the encroachment, and focus finally returned to the lengthy and painful process of getting the purchasers to sign the mortgage, getting the house transferred into their name, and getting Lillian her money from the sale. After scaling more bureaucratic hurdles, the deal was finally closed in 2014. Even though she was locked in at the sale price from 1999 due to Johnson’s sloppy work, she could finally push the house out of her mind and move on with her life.
By the time the deal was done and Johnson punished for his negligence, Lillian had lost nearly CDN$60,000 from currency devaluations, fees and expenses – not to mention the time wasted dealing with Johnson and trying to get the job done. She only saw progress after she contacted our firm for help and although she cannot recover the time and money lost dealing with the twisted process, she can rest easy now that everything is behind her.
“I personally would not wish this experience on my enemy and I cannot thank the Nicholson Phillips team enough for sticking with me through all of this” Lillian said to us.
Lillian contacted Nicholson Phillips in 2005, and we worked with her and gave her our all until the unpleasant affair was complete. Real estate transactions do take more time in Jamaica than in Canada – and when dealing across international lines it may take even longer. But 15 years – including a several year legal fight trying to track down and collect payments from the purchasers, and years of her lawyer dodging calls and refusing to answer her questions – is not only too long for a normal proceeding, it’s too long for even a delayed proceeding. No one should have to go through this sort of trouble to buy or sell property.