TANYA OETZMANN should be enjoying retirement. But at 72 she gets up before dawn to tend her smallholding of cows and pigs — and not just for the love of it; it is her livelihood. Not, though, for much longer. Oetzmann will soon be forced to sell her seven acres in settlement of a legal dispute that saw her end up bankrupt through no fault of her own.

Her case was first highlighted in Law (November 25, 2003): in summary, her thatched farmhouse near Thetford, Norfolk, caught fire with the loss of the roof and five bedrooms. Her architect failed to complete the job within the insurance budget and his designs, she says, were defective.

She lodged a county court claim but a solicitor wrongly advised her that she had to drop it and go to arbitration. That meant the loss of her legal aid: lack of funds forced her to abandon the arbitration and she found herself with a costs order of £54,000 for bills unpaid because of the defects in the work. She was then pursued to bankruptcy.

The final chapter, three years on, is no better. The bankruptcy meant that she no longer had the right to pursue a negligence claim against the lawyers who wrongly advised her; that right was now vested in the trustee in bankruptcy whose duty was to pursue it in settlement of her debts.

Oetzmann could still claim for distress suffered, and that was pursued pro bono by a City law firm, who secured her £7,000. Meanwhile, the bankruptcy trustee settled her negligence claim — but with an £80,000 shortfall in costs still owed. The upshot is that she will have to sell her land — and her house remains in disrepair. Oeztmann, who has taken up her case with MPs and ministers, says: “It is so unjust. I will end up with nothing — and entirely through other people’s negligence.”

Lawyers agree. One said: “There is a case for a change in the law so that where someone is made bankrupt through the negligence of third parties, there should be strict liability — so that the bankrupt’s expenses are automatically borne by the negligent advisers. Mrs Oeztmann should be put back in the position she’d be in if she’d not been made bankrupt — anything else is fundamentally unjust. Instead, her house is falling down; she’ll have to sell her land and she’ll lose her chief source of income.”

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