<p>^ Which is exactly what the OP sheould do with the inappropriate bill form teh neighbor’s attorney. Well, actually, to be fair, its shouldn’d be ignored, but rather directed to the party responsible for it, which is not the OP.</p>
<p>Not an atty, but here’s what I’d do. Let me suggest a combo of ideas.
Send a letter much like NEmom said in post 7.
Send same letter other atty, and to neighbor. Neighbor may not even know his atty billed you.
Add to it, that neighbor approached YOU in an effort to make his property more sellable. And, you think this bill is probably an honest error, but as such you expect it to be promptly corrected. If it isn’t, and you need to engage your attorney to get it corrected, then you will be billing his services to either the neighbor, the attorney or both.</p>
<p>Such an addendum may not legally bind other party into paying for your attorney, but it is likely to help get their attention.</p>
<p>If this letter doesn’t work, then turn it over to your atty</p>
<p>If I were the neighbor, since I had requested the change to increase the value of my property, then I would expect to foot the bill, unless I had agreed otherwise with the other party. Similarly, if I desire a fence to separate my neighbor’s property from mine, I may need a survey to be sure of the property line. The fence was my idea, and I want the fence, so I expect I must pay the bill, unless my neighbor agrees to split it. My neighbor may benefit from some additional privacy as a result, but that doesn’t make it his bill. The fence was my idea, and I want the fence, so I expect I must pay the bill.</p>
<p>Agree with the post above–would NOT have my attorney handle it unless it doesn’t work itself out because that will add to your legal fees.</p>
<p>I’ve forwarded all of your excellent advice to H, with my suggestion as to what to do, which I describe below.</p>
<p>The bill included about $500 in out-of-pocket costs such as filing and bank fees. We explicitly stated early on that we did not want to pay for any appraisals and fees.</p>
<p>My suggestion to H is that we send a letter to the atty stating that we did not retain him and have no obligation to or intention of paying any portion of our neighbor’s legal fees, but that in the interest of neighborly goodwill we are willing to cover the out of pocket costs listed in the bill, and enclose a check for that amount.</p>
<p>I’m willing to bet that a) we will hear no more about it, and b) that may have been the result they were angling for in the first place.</p>
<p>BTW, the reconfiguration of our property as a result of this deal does, IMHO, improve it somewhat, since the additional land is directly behind the house and adds 75 feet to the buffer between our house and any potential building on the new lot. So I regard the deal as generally favorable to both parties, although not conferring any quantifiable benefit on us. For that reason, and because H now has a real job, which he didn’t when this all started, I am willing to pay the fees.</p>
<p>I would not pay anything to the attorney. I am not a lawyer, but if you pay him anything, is it possible it could be considered an implied contract between you two? You do not want to be in that position.</p>
<p>Jym is right. Don’t pay anything. He has an engagement letter with the actual client which lists those out of pocket costs. Either you did retain him or you didn’t. At the very least begin your negotiation at zero. Personally, I would stay at zero.</p>
<p>I agree with JYM & ZM. Start out at zero & consider staying at zero. Do NOT start out with paying $500 in out of pocket costs, it will only go up from there.</p>
<p>Agree don’t pay anything or agree to pay anything at this point. If negotiation has to occur let the laywer negotiate his own invoice!</p>
<p>By the way, the only way you pay anything on this is if you choose to. You won’t be compelled and there is nothing the lawyer can do. You didn’t retain him and only dealt with him in the context of assisting your neighbor. If you choose not to cave, you pay nothing.</p>
<p>Thanks, everyone. I am forwarding your further advice to H. </p>
<p>I guess I felt that I was willing to cough up the smaller sum to keep the neighborhood peace, even though we obviously didn’t retain this guy or agree to pay him anything and didn’t initiate the process. Our neighbor has probably spent an arm and a leg getting the land surveyed–it was quite complex, with all sorts of never-formally-surveyed out-conveyances and such going back at least 150 years–plus legal fees, but that is not our fault.</p>
<p>I think agreeing to pay anything at this stage would be like admitting you have some responsibility to pay. So I agree with the others that say, don’t.</p>
<p>Sheesh - talk about no good deed going unpunished.</p>
<p>When we bought our place, we had to have party-wall agreements & other things created so that title was clear (walls on our property zigged & zagged along the property line on all sides of us). That was part of the costs associated with our purchase & the sale by the owner/agent. NONE of our neighbors had to pay anything out of their pockets for being nice & working with us & our relator and/or attorney(s). Being nice is not the same as being a doormat. Don’t worry, if things don’t resolve, you can THEN have the option of being willing to pay some small amount to keep peace, IF you want to.</p>
<p>Consolation, you’re on the right track. </p>
<p>I’m late to the party, but I’m in the camp of (1) not paying your own lawyer to do something about it, or even risk that he will charge you for cc’ing the letter to him, (2) tell the billing lawyer by mail or phone that you didn’t authorize him to do work on your behalf so that you assume there must be some mistake. (3) I don’t think there’s anything wrong with creating goodwill by offering to pay the out of pocket costs, but it would be equally reasonable to hold that back and offer it later, if this lawyer has the temerity to complain about you not paying this bill. If you are inclined to pay the costs, I would be sure to look at actual receipts so that the lawyer is not taking the opportunity to make this an opportunity to mark up his actual costs.</p>
<p>I’m not a lawyer-hater, despite the tone of my posts. I am a lawyer, in fact, and hate it when anyone feels any sort of deference toward lawyers :)</p>
<p>I’m not a lawyer but I often get involved in large legal disputes. I find that in such situations, there are often facts/interpretations supporting some aspect of both sides’ cases. </p>
<p>This one, on the surface, seems pretty straightforward. I would probably not call saying this must be a mistake, because that will give the lawyer the opportunity to explain why it wasn’t a mistake and that he did all this work for you and … . I would go for a letter stating you that received a bill from him and suspect that his office has made a billing mistake. [this gives him a face-saving out]. You could say that you were surprised in that you that you never engaged him nor discussed fees [assuming this is true]. Given that he was working to help accommodate your neighbor’s needs, you suspect that he intended to send the bill to your neighbor.</p>
<p>If he’s persistent, he’ll argue that you benefited from the transaction and he was enabling you to benefit. My suspicion is that he he could not represent you without you formally waiving a concern about conflict of interest (the primary law firm I use always insists on such a waiver), but lawyers on the board undoubtedly know better about the law.</p>
<p>I strongly agree with JYm’s post, 25.</p>
<p>Op has already made a goodwill gesture- letting this neighbor’s project happen when OP could have said No.</p>
<p>If the OP has the money and the desire to make a $ goodwill payment, I’d suggest this:
Wait until this “billing error” is settled and if it turns out at no cost to OP, then make a cash gift to the neighbor. NOT in the exact amount of anything billed, just round off to what could be considered good will.
Perhaps could attach a note like- I know you’ve had a lot of costs to make your project happen. Here is a little something to be a good neighbor.</p>
<p>Although for me, based on what I’ve read, I wouldn’t make such a gesture. The OP has already incurred atty costs having paperwork reviewed for the neighbor’s project. Without being political, I’d ask rhetorically, why should OP have to pay neighbor’s bills?</p>
<p>I vote with Shawbridge on this issue.
If the lawyer didn’t recognize there was a conflict of interest here, bad on him.
If he realized there was a conflict of interest, and didn’t get a written waiver from you, more bad on him.
Not only that, but it being that you had your own lawyer look over paper work–something I am sure he was aware of–he certainly was on notice that you had not retained him to do any legal work for you.
So if you want to be nice, just treat it as if you suspect a billing error. He can’t honestly have any expectation of collect a cent from you–but hey, he gave it a flying chance. My guess is that he just doesn’t want to present your neighbors with what might be a very large bill, or a bill in subsantial excess of what his original estimate to them had been.
Don’t let him tell you that you received any benefit from the work he did, and thus you owe him–he had to do that work in any event as part of his representation of your neighbor. It is nice that your property value will rise substantially because of the addition of the parcel…but the motive behind all of this was to increase the value of your neighbor’s property and the fact that you also benefitted is irrelevant to his bill.</p>
<p>Latest installment: H spoke to the lawyer (before reading any of the posts I had forwarded to him). I gather that H said something about not having retained the lawyer/being surprised to get this bill. The lawyer responded to the effect that they were “wondering what we felt we could do.” H said he had to talk to me about it and ended the call. (He was also driving at the time, so that gave him an additional reason to keep it brief.)</p>
<p>I should explain that this is a small town of about 6,000 people, and so relationships are more intimate than is the case in most places. I can walk to this lawyer’s office. Even in the greater Portland area, it’s a small world. That’s one reason why I’m willing to contribute the out of pocket costs, now that we actually have a decent income. Paying the legal fees, no way in hell. But it does not sound as if the lawyer would have the temerity to push for more. In fact, he’d probably be happy to get that much, since he must know he doesn’t have a leg to stand on.</p>
<p>Repeating-- paying him anything could set up an implied contract and conflict of interest, as was mentioned too. As you said, this is being done at the request of your neighbor, and even though you have some benefit with the driveway thing, you have your own attorneys fees to pay. “Wondering what you felt you could do?” Send the bill to the neighbor is the response!! That is really nervy of the attorney to bill you for anything and then ask “what can you do”. Sorry- its not appropriate. Politely tell them this would be a conflict of interest and to redirect the bill to the neighbor. </p>
<p>I was being kind to a neighbor at my dads, when a tree in their yard fell across our fence and into my dads yard. We, to be neighborly, shared the cost of the tree removal (and they picked a very expensive service). Well, every time they had a tree that in the least bit leaned into my dads yard, they hit us up to split the cost of their tree work (ie their tree got hit by lightening). Again-- to be nice, I paid, but enough already!!! The house is now on the market and if they dare ask for any more tree $$, the answer is NO.</p>
<p>** Still thinking about the “what can you do” line from the lawyer. Thats really inappropriate. He is not your attorney. YOu have now contractula arrangement with him. this is being done at the request of your neighbor and you should not have to pay for the priviledge of helping them.</p>
<p>I agree with the others - I wouldn’t pay him a cent. Consolation, I live in your area, so I know what you mean. One client we had difficulties with was an attorney whose son was in our daughter’s kindergarten class. Awkward. But we knew we were in the right, so we insisted that he pay us what he owed us, and he did. We try to be accommodating when we can, but we don’t want to be door mats, either.</p>
<p>Living in a small town, I get the pic. BUT that just reinforces what most have suggested here. Start off with a friendly note this billing you must have been in error. Your neighbor desired the project, and you did not hire neighbor’s attorney. Maybe that will end it, and in a friendly way. But if not, don’t be worried that people will spread the word that you didn’t pay your neighbor’s bills. Who cares? But your neighbor’s atty might be concerned if YOU spread the word that he falsely(maybe fraudulently) tried to bill you! The atty has more to fear from the damage of reputation than you do.</p>
<p>It just makes no sense to me that you might receive a bill from a service you did not contract, yet you are considering sending a payment as goodwill, but don’t think that payment might serve as an indication you owe the bill. How can you say to that atty- “I don’t owe you. Here’s some money.” Really? See para 1, post 38. Pleae re-read my post 35.</p>
<p>And, to the Op- I need some roof repair, may I bill you for part of that? It’s not your house or your obligation, you didn’t hire my roofer, but I get the idea that now that hub has a job, you are willing, even in a hurry to pay bills that aren’t yours! See what I mean?</p>