Coleman -v- Mullen
Neutral Citation: [2011] IEHC 179
High Court
Judgment was delivered by Mr Justice Gerard Hogan on May 3rd, 2011
Judgment
Mr Justice Hogan upheld an appeal by the executor of the will of a childless widow against a Circuit Court award of €25,000 to a neighbour and friend of the deceased who had looked after her for many years.
Background
The late Elizabeth O’Keeffe, a widow who died in November 1999, left a number of specific bequests to named individuals, including €8,000 to the plaintiff, Ms Coleman. She left her house and contents to her relative, Frank Mullen, who was also the residuary legatee and the executor. The Circuit Court awarded Ms Coleman €25,000.
The evidence showed Ms Coleman befriended Ms O’Keeffe following the death of the latter’s husband in 1990 and was effectively her constant companion, attending to her daily chores and accompanying her on her business in the Dalkey area. When Ms O’Keeffe entered a nursing home Ms Coleman visited her, cleaned her house and attended to her laundry.
There was also a very clear bond of friendship between the two women, and Ms O’Keeffe doted on Ms Coleman’s three young children, even informally adopting them as her “grandchildren”. However, there was no suggestion of a promise made to the plaintiff or her children in relation to inheritance, and in this the case differed from that of McCarron -v- McCarron, where a young man had worked on his uncle’s farms without reward for 16 years in the expectation of inheriting them.
Nor was the case comparable to that where a child looked after an ailing or elderly parent and found after the death that other family members had been rewarded at his or her expense. This could be remedied by S 117 of the Succession Act 1965.
The services rendered by Ms Coleman were purely voluntary, and her numerous acts of kindness were prompted exclusively by considerations of friendship and kind-heartedness.
She herself disclaimed the idea of any binding contract, and said she would not have contemplated suing Ms O’Keeffe during her lifetime, and would have provided the services she did even if Ms O’Keeffe had made it clear she would make no provision for her.
The question which arose is whether the plaintiff’s actions could give rise to a claim in quantum meruit, that is, an obligation to pay a sum independently of contract.
Having examined the case law on this, Mr Justice Hogan said that if Ms Coleman had been retained as a housekeeper, even if the question of payment had never actually been discussed, she would have been entitled to be paid on a quantum meruit basis. But she was not retained on this basis – rather, she acted voluntarily as a good friend to an elderly neighbour.
It was perfectly clear, having heard the frank evidence of Ms Coleman, that there was no intention to create legal relations.
Decision
If, therefore, there was no intention to create legal relations, he asked, should the law impose such an obligation?
“I do not think that the courts can – or should – take this step,” Mr Justice Hogan said. “If the law is to be changed such as to enable voluntary carers of family and neighbours to make quantum meruit claims of this kind quite independently of any intention to create legal relationships, this would represent a potentially far-reaching legal change which could not be described as being some incremental and perfectly logical deduction from the existing corpus of case-law in this area. A change of this kind would be a matter for the Oireachtas.”
Such a change would present considerable policy questions for the Oireachtas. It could mean adult children would dissuade their parents from accepting the kindness of neighbours for fear it would lead to such a claim; or it could lead to less than altruistic motives for offering such help.
He concluded that in the absence of any intention to create legal relations, the plaintiff was not entitled to maintain her claim for quantum meruit against the estate of Ms O’Keeffe. He allowed the appeal and set aside the award of the Circuit Court. The full judgment is on www.courts.ie.
John E Donnelly BL, instructed by Byrne Wallace, for the plaintiff; Conor Devally SC and Vincent Scallon BL, instructed by Maguire McNeice Solicitors, for the defendant