For years, we have detailed how the legal profession in Barbados, swollen with an excess of lawyers that far exceeds the amount of legal business available to support them, has exploited uneducated landowners by stealing their valuable oceanfront property during probate proceedings, or taking their sales proceeds after a closing occurs. The country's disciplinary procedures regarding lawyers is unable or unwilling to rein in the illegal practice, so land owned by a family for centuries is stolen, and sold to a European developer, as a bona fide purchaser having no notice of the fraud, and who believes good time was conveyed. Neither the Barbados government, nor the courts, have provided remedies for the many victims. Unscrupulous lawyers have become rich off their probate and real estate client's assets, and they end up in the Barbados government, so of course they will not assist in reform of the situation.
Now, however, we are seeing stirrings of action among the victims; JOHN WAYNE SCANTLEBURY, refusing to allow a developer of a residential housing project (FUSTIC GARDENS) to take advantage of his family's patrimony, has secured counsel, and sent the attached Cease & Desist notice to the Minister of Housing, the Prime Minister, Registrar of Titles, Minister of Finance, and several other government officials including the country's Supreme Court. (We note the receipt by the Registrar of Titles, which should serve to put any prospective purchasers on actual notice of defects in the real estate title.)
It is high time that the practice of unemployed lawyers in Barbados feeding off their clients' real estate holdings; these professionals should all be in prison for their sins and transgressions. We can only hope that the courts wake up and put them there. All the other victims should now follow Mr. Scantlebury's example and move against the dirty lawyers who stole their property or real estate sales proceeds.
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