Action against solicitors ‘regrettable’, says judge

A judge has criticised a claimant for alleging that the solicitors representing her family in a long-running inheritance dispute caused stress and inconvenience, telling her ‘this was not a holiday contract’.

In a judgment handed down at the Queen’s Bench Division at the High Court, Mrs Justice McGowan said Gonul Guney, the daughter of millionaire businessman Ramadan Guney, had brought a ‘regrettable’ and costly claim against London firm Kingsley Napley.

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Ramadan Guney, the owner of Brookwood Cemetery in Surrey, the largest in the UK, died in 2006. Guney was married to Suheyla Guney but she died in 1992. The pair had six children, including Gonul.

In 2012, after a long legal dispute, ownership of the cemetery and another property, was awarded to Ramadan's former partner Diane Holliday.

In the current claim, initially filed in 2014, Gonul Guney, who according to the judgment is also a solicitor, said Kingsley Napley should be held accountable for her loss of inheritance. The case is expected to go to trial in January next year; the current dispute centred on claims that will form part of that trial.

In Gonul Guney v Kingsley Napley and Another, Guney claimed that, had she been properly advised, she would have been able to properly settle the claim at a ‘much earlier date’. She added that she should be due damages for losses and for stress and inconvenience.

Kingsley Napley sought summary judgment on the monetary claims and called for the claims surrounding stress and inconvenience to be struck out.

In a judgment handed down on 28 September, Mrs Justice McGowan said there were ‘no reasonable grounds for bringing the claims’.

On the alleged cause of ‘stress and inconvenience’, McGowan added: ‘This was not a contract for the provision of a holiday, a pleasurable activity relaxation or peace of mind. This was a contract to act in relation to a family dispute.’

She added that it was ‘too remote’ to say that solicitors conducting litigation ‘assume liability for the stresses that that imposes on the litigants involved’.

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Action against solicitors ‘regrettable’, says judge