My joyful descent into holiday weekend relaxation mode was interrupted by a Friday afternoon news story that caught my attention. Harmon Law Offices, a Massachusetts law firm, placed an ad in the New Bedford Standard Times announcing a land sale in Fairhaven.
The advertisement stated that the land “…shall not be sold, leased or rented to any person other than of the Caucasian race or to any entity of which any person other than of said race shall be a member, stockholder, officer or director.”
In a statement issued to FOX25, Harmon Law Offices said: “This notice involves a restriction that a previous owner placed on the property. We do not condone the language and do not believe that it would be enforceable. It is industry practice to include in the notice of sale the exact legal description as set forth in the mortgage. We have removed the language for future legal notices.”
As I mentioned on Twitter, and as I’ve been thinking about on the weekend, this news story raises a number of issues.
First and foremost, I cannot ignore the fact that this news story hit the headlines and the local news broadcasts on a Friday afternoon preceding a long holiday weekend (May 28). Many people consider this a great time to kill a news story before it even takes hold: release it on a Friday afternoon with the hope that it doesn’t take hold, and by Monday, all will be forgotten. One might wonder why there was such a delay in reporting it since according to the Standard Times, the notice for sale was published on May 17 and May 24.
But perhaps more importantly, is the question no one seems to be asking: how was Harmon Law Offices asleep at the wheel? In other words, how did this firm allow this to happen. As my colleague Edward Wiest observed:
What this case may say about law practice is even more troubling. Presumably, a lawyer was responsible for copying, scanning, cutting and pasting the relevant deed language into the notice of sale. The lawyer who did this piece of work (or supervised the person who did) seems to have done so without reading the language in issue. What happened here is no argument for maintaining the current scope of real estate conveyancing work now viewed to be in the exclusive domain of the practice of law.
And he’s right. While mistakes can and do happen, and they are regrettable, this mistake could have easily have been avoided by simply reading the language in the original documents. Anyone paying attention should have caught it. Indeed, if conveyancing work is within the exclusive domain of the practice of law, then sound practice would have commanded a careful attention to the prohibited (and highly offensive) language to ensure that it never saw the light of day. The fact that it did is not only shameful, but suggests a far more systemic problem in the practice of law. That’s something I’ll be writing more about in the days and weeks ahead.
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