Sitting on your hands can be uncomfortable!

I’m a big fan of giving clients all the options (even the bad ones), setting out the pros and cons, and then leaving them to make up their own minds.

It’s my job to give you as many routes as possible, but it’s not my role to tell you what to do.

Sometimes clients ask me what I would do personally, if I was in their shoes, and occasionally I have to resist the temptation to say that I wouldn’t have got myself into this situation in the first place (!) but mostly it’s just about talking through scenarios until we come up with one that the client likes, or at least dislikes less than the others.

My first option is always “do nothing” not because that is the right thing to do, but because it’s important to remember that you don’t have to act, and if you are going to act, you don’t have to do it immediately.

For example, if you’re claiming outstanding fees, you’ve got 6 years from when the work was done to bring a claim.  So if now is not a great time (e.g. you’re not sure you can afford the court fees or you’re not sure the other side are good for the money) you always have the option of hanging tight for a few months and then reviewing it.

Or if you’re being threatened with legal action and being told by the other side that you MUST reply/pay by the end of the week, it’s always worth considering whether they’re bluffing.

However, sometimes doing nothing can make things worse.

In a recent case about the enforceability of restrictive covenants in a property dispute, the fact that the owner of the property had made several attempts to discuss the development with their neighbours, and the fact that the neighbours had ignored the correspondence, not just during the development but for TWO YEARS afterwards was found to be a fundamental flaw in their argument. The Tribunal concluded that the neighbours failure to do or say anything in terms of an objection for such a long period of time led to the conclusion that they didn’t really mind about the development, but were simply using it as an excuse to pursue the property owner when a dispute arose between the over (of all things!) access to the bins!

That doesn’t mean that you can’t ignore something, but it does mean that if you choose to do nothing for a lengthy period of time, it could undermine any arguments you may wish to run at a later stage.

Which means that there’s no harm in delaying taking action, so long as you don’t wait to take legal advice on what the effect of that delay might mean!

Kleyman & Co Solicitors.  The full service law firm.  We’ll never ignore you.