The Mercantile Court in the High Court of Justice in London awarded £104,885 in default plus costs against Fox and its London representative office.
The client, Lawrence Karat, who is the London-based director of The Movie Card People Company, which is based in Hong Kong.
Karat instructed Fox in a patent application after meeting managing partner Som Mandal in November 2008, who allegedly “represented that the defendant firm is one of the largest [law firms] in India and will be best law firm for claimant to instruct for his patent application in India for his latest invention”, according to the particulars of claim filed with the court.
However, Karat claimed that the case was not properly managed for four years in breach of the firm’s duty to “act with all proper skill, care diligence and competence as a patent attorney”, potentially resulting in the dismissal of his patent.
Mandal commented in a phone message: “We have no news about the matter except that our client sent us a mail recently. We are instructing solicitors in UK to apply for setting aside the default judgment.”
In the particulars of claim submitted to the court by the London office of Karat’s lawyers Singhania & Co, Karat alleged that the patent application was dealt with in an “unprofessional manner”. He also part-blamed the churn of lawyers and partners leaving FoxMandal Little, as it was then called, as reported by Legally India at the time. His case was therefore “handled by many lawyers in the firm over the period of time”.
Karat claimed that Fox could not retrieve his case files and a power of attorney was misplaced. A new power of attorney was executed by Karat but was allegedly notarised by Fox in India without Karat physically present, which in his view was illegal.
Furthermore, a “proof of right” deadline was missed in the Mumbai patent office, which could lead to a dismissal of the patent, according to Karat.
Karat agreed to limit his claim against Fox to £100,000 plus interest, which the high court awarded in default on 23 May 2013 because Fox did not appear before the court.
Karat said that he was considering a bar council complaint in India and further enforcement action for the default amounts.
Historically there have not been any reported cases of an Indian law firm getting sued by a client, whether in India or abroad. Nevertheless, interest in professional indemnity insurance has been increasing among law firms to a limited degree, Legally India reported last year.
Comments
second, I believe FM has malpractice insurance.
or so Mr Som Mandal used to claim.
RightsAsia's comment and the following ones are all numbered "1.1 ..." Except the left margin indenting, it is not clear who is replying to which comment. This is a problem on all comments sections on LI.
Hope you can fix it.
Regards.
I am not sure why there should be any confusion with numbering when it comes to literate people, and lawyers at that! If comment 1's replies are marked 1.1, 1.2, 1.3 and so on and replies to 1.2 is marked 1.2.1 and 1.2.2 and so on, I don't think there will be any confusion. Demonstrated below (not sure if it will get posted the way I have typed it, but fingers crossed) -
1.
1.1
1.2
1.2.1
1.2.2
1.3
Please consider displaying the numbering, which is the best (and standard) way to identify who is replying to who! Thanks.
Just a thought. It seems that there is a limit to the no. of characters that can be displayed in terms of numbering, e.g. Money Phatnagar's comment numbered 1.1(1).1 (in response to 1.1(1) Rights Asia) is the last comment on which the numbering is displayed in its entirety. Maybe remove the parenthesis, which uses 2 characters "(" and ")" to make it 1.1.1 instead of 1.1(1). Or even better, just increase the no. of characters the numbering field can take. It'll be good to have full numbers.
Cheers.
Since you made a comment against Indian lawyers, which dark backward jurisdiction are you based in? I ask as you seem to be full of ignorance, but blissfully arrogant.
Indian lawyer.
Excellent reporting. Will be interesting to see how this plays out.
ok then pls give link to suit or whatever. Am dying to know the lawyers involved.
[quote name="kianganz"]I believe they closed their big London office a while ago but they still have a smaller office somewhere in London...[/quote]
Malpractice cases are routine in developed markets, especially the US, but Singhania certainly seems comfortable spoiling the name of the profession abroad by taking up such a case. They must be really desperate or the social cost of the representation would have exceeded the fee. Maybe they just wanted to stick it to Foxy. Is there bad blood between them?
Don't shoot the person who tries to enforce accountability in such a situation. This is why the legal profession has become the haven of incompetence - because holding lawyers accountable for their negligence/unethical practices is somehow perceived as being against the profession (even though it is quite the opposite).
FM is strategically correct to allow default and then defend it here. They're only engaging abroad now out of embarrassment, which is a strategic error.
This certainly looks like a case foisted by Snghania to embarrass FM, which needs very little outside assistance to do so.
Wish they had given importance to talented individuals rather than chase big dreams in form of a stronger foothold in Mumbai with Little and the London outpost, both of which were badly timed. The matter could have been retrieved if rights steps had been taken way back in 2008, when the legal markets dipped. Unfortunately, the management did not pick up the signals in time. It does not take political contacts to come out on top in the legal industry, all it needs is a hardworking, sincere and talented team supervised by experienced partners with a hold on law and a knack for doing business.
[i]simple !![/i]
RIP
i) b'cause you, like all of us, have a right to criticise.
ii) "Criticism hurts for most, but given right,[s] it [/s] you can inspire both the critic and the critiqued"
iii) but... as they say "There's one thing you just can't [s]sweep under the carpet[/s] nay 'Ignore' and that is the missing roof" !!