May 2009 Archives

I am off on holiday for the next week [as you can see from the photo I am going to Wales] so if you have just arrived I apologise for the lack of postings, but please have a look at some of my recent postings and leave a comment if you can.

I will be back on 1 June, the day before court begins for the Summer term.

Cheers

Christian

Photo by muha via Flickr

Plenty of interest in this Saturday's EG.

In news, I report on some revelations concerning developers Modus Properties and Howard Holdings Plc that came out of the winding-up court that I visited earlier this week [see my previous Whack-a-barrister posting].

On page 44 we have an interesting letter from Ashurst partner Anthony Burnett-Scott and Lovells partner Nicholas Cheffings [Cheffers to his friends] discussing virtual assignments case Clarence House Ltd v National Westminster Bank plc.

While in the legal and professional section we have an article by Lambert Smith Hampton's Charles Partridge in which he argues that despite the current market conditions, the 2010 rating revaluation should not be postponed. As a counterpoint we also have Stuart McCann of Eversheds contending that the new 2010 rating list may threaten jobs and economic growth.

If you are a subscriber, the law report for Clarence House can be read here while Sandi Murdoch's legal note article is here.

My story on Howard Holdings can now be read here.

While the story filed by EG's North and Scotland editor David Quinn and I can be found here.

If you are not a subcriber then leave a comment and I will try my best to give your more information.

With Wimbledon just around the corner a £4.6m legal dispute between the All England Lawn Tennis Club and top international design practice Building Design Partnership over alleged design flaws on the media centre is hotting up quite nicely.

In a writ filed at the High Court in March, the club accused BDP and subcontractor FB Ellmer of "defective design" and "poor workmanship" on the allegedly leaky Millennium Building. [the Millennium curse strikes again - bridge, dome, building, Robbie Williams etc etc]

BDP has now filed a response to the writ that says the club's claims are an "abuse of process" and that it had failed to address the alleged defects in a "proper and timeous fashion".

"The club should have investigated and discovered the extent of the alleged defects by the end of 2001 at the latest", it says.

So there!

Photo by qbird via Flickr

Painsmith Landord and Tenant blog has an important reminder of what has and what has not happened in the OFT v Foxtons dispute that we are awaiting judgment on.

Read it here

Photo by Richard Adams "dipfan" via Flickr

This cracking game brings together two cultural greats: The Winding Up list of the Companies Court and the Whack-a-Mole fairground game to bring us... Wait for it: the RCJ Whack-a-Barrister electronic game.

How quickly can you bash the Barrister? Are your reactions lightning-sharp? Don't let their jeering put you off. Stay focused and bash the little blighters as soon as they stand up. The Barristers react to bops and bashes with yelps and shouts, which only serves to make it more appealing to batter them about the head. Bliss.

The RCJ Whack-a-Barrister game is perfect for mischievous - read mildly violent - judges who get bored easily. They can pit their reactions against their friends and take it in turns to see who can whack the most Barristers in the quickest time.

The real Whack-a-bash game can be purchased here

Thanks to Herbert Smith we can expect to see a site such as this [see above] on London's South Bank from 27 May.

The cow will be used as the venue for an eight week season of comedy, circus, music, magic, theatre and children's shows beginning on 27 May.

Matthew White, the planning partner responsible, said: "We have won planning permission for some unusual and sometimes controversial schemes in the past, but this is the first time we've helped a client to secure consent for a giant purple cow."

Photo by Seth m via Flickr

As a TK Maxx obsessive myself I know who I am rooting for in the battle between the Crown Estate and Asif Aziz's Criterion Capital over a proposed Piccadilly flagship for the discount retailer. [I love this photo of Piccadilly at night by the way]

The Crown, which owns the freehold of the Criterion Building at 218-229 Piccadilly, doesn't think TK Maxx is high class enough while Criterion, which has the leasehold and wants to underlet to TK Maxx, claims it the victim of "class war".

So get your banners ready and begin the march on the Palace, with a 3-day trial of the dispute scheduled for late September TK Maxx could be in for xmas. Hurray!!

No journalistic objectivity went into this posting.

Photo by doug88888 via Flickr

Listen to EG Legal's Tina Desai talking with Peter Goodacre, president of RICS, about the effect the recession is having on surveyors, his goals during his tenure and the future of the industry body.

Here it is ...

Tina Desai talks to RICS President Peter Goodacre

The Estates Gazette Podcast

The House of Lords has unfortunately just refused permission to appeal in two cases which I had been following for Estates Gazette.

Of most interest was the case of Salvage Wharf Ltd and another v G&S Brough Ltd in which Alan Chatham's and Mark Billingham's Birmingham Development Company lost a rights to light dispute with a former neighbour of the Cube - the mixed-use extension to Birmingham's Mailbox [photo left].

The Court of Appeal and High Court made interesting rulings regarding the extent to which rights to light that affect the 500,000 sq ft Ken Shuttleworth-designed building had been extinguished by a prior agreement.

The second case is Isle of Anglesey County Council and another v Welsh Ministries and others which concerned a spanking new £17m marina planned for Anglesey.

The High Court and the Court of Appeal backed the argument of local fishermen that the scheme, proposed by the Crown Estate and Anglesey Council, was unlawful and would damage mussel beds in the area.

If you are a subscriber to EGi the law reports of the Court of Appeal decisions can be read here and here

Photo by Daniel Morris via Flickr

Always good to hear of a recently filed claim which will lead to loads of juicy interim applications for me to follow.

In the Observer over the weekend Robert Tchenguiz's business empire was reported as being hit by a £180m legal suit by its former best friend Kaupthing.

The failed Icelandic Bank is said to be upset at having been prevented from taking control of its proceeds from the sale of Somerfield.

The defendants are understood to be insisting that the transfer of the Somerfield investments was a legitimate tactical move to protect claims of Tchenguiz companies over assets from the bank.

The full story is here

As I blogged earlier, I wrote a story for this Saturday's EG on Ballymore's dressing down by a High Court judge. It is now on EGi and can be viewed here. 

Briefly, on Wednesday, Tim Farrow, who was planning director at Ballymore until November 2008, sought to apply for summary judgment of parts of his claim for £3.6m in unpaid bonuses and compensation for wrongful dismissal, without the need for a
full trial.

Before the application went ahead, however, the judge told Ballymore that he was not impressed with its conduct of the litigation so far and it needed to consider a compromise by way of an interim payment to Farrow if it wanted to avoid summary judgment.

If a compromise is not reached, the application will go ahead on Monday (I notice that the matter is listed for Monday on the Cause List published this afternoon).

Farrow, who has hired Selwyn Bloch QC to argue his case, will then argue, amongst other things, that he is owed a £1m bonus for obtaining planning permission for the 1.9m sq ft Leamouth Peninsula scheme opposite the O2 in Greenwich.

Remember that this Sunday (17 May) is the International Day against Homophobia.

The date was chosen because it marks the anniversary of the day in 1990 when the World Health Organisation removed homosexuality from its list of mental diseases.

In a statement this morning, Terry Davis, Secretary General of the Council of Europe, said "Everyone knows that homosexuals were arrested and sent to concentration camps by the Nazis, but it is less well known that after they were freed from the camps, many homosexuals were forced to serve out their terms of imprisonment.

"This may seem shocking, but it was consistent with the deeply rooted discrimination against homosexuals in Europe at that time. And it was also consistent with the discrimination against homosexuals in the decades which followed.

"Today, being a homosexual will no longer, at least not in a member state of the Council of Europe, result in being put in prison, but discrimination and homophobia still exist and not only on the margins of society," he said.

Links to further information can be found on wikipedia here

Photo by Marlith - Kevin Wong via flickr

Paul Norman, our EGi news editor, has well and truly pipped me to the post on a nice legal row brewing in Ireland.

CB Richard Ellis has fallen out with Irish property tycoon Sean Dunne [see left] over €1.5m (£896,500) of allegedly unpaid fees.

Dunne is counter-claiming for €35m (£31.3m) in damages from the agent, alleging that it allowed him to overpay for a Dublin property.

If you subscribe to EGi then you can see the rest of the story here

If you aren't a subscriber then e-mail me and I will do my best to give you the rest of the story.

I have two decent stories in this Saturday's EG.

Ballymore gets a sharp rap across the knuckles from a High Court judge, while an investment company part-owned by Peter Klimt and Guy Naggar is more than a bit unhappy about a substantial share sale made by a lender during the final days of the Dawnay Day empire last July.

The feature is on the four-year legal battle between JD Weatherspoon's chairman Tim Martin and his former protege and friend property agent Christian Braun.

You will have to wait for Saturday to find out more.

As a "longtime reader but firsttime linker" to Nearly Legal's excellent blog I am pleased to link to an excellent post today about Port of London Authority v Ashmore. 

See Nearly Legal's post here

There was more than a little laughter in Court 9 of St Dunstan's House this morning when a strange announcement was made to those assembled to explain the late start of what seemed a straightforward planning dispute over an extension to a Sainsburys store in Northwick in Cheshire. Everyone was raring to go, but where the hell was the judge?

As announced to the court, David Holgate QC sitting as a Deputy Judge was already late owing to a mix up over what court room he was sitting in. However, things went from bad to worse when once the correct court room was found court staff put the judge in a room so he could get changed.

The problem was that no one could remember what room he had been put in so the poor usher had to comb the building in search of the errant judge.

You will be pleased to know that he was eventually located and was able to start the case, if a little flustered, only an hour late.

Photo by Steve Punter via Flickr

Squatters will be eyeing up some prime riverside real estate after a test case last week.

Rupert Ashmore, the owner of the sailing barge Atrato, is moored opposite Hutchison Whampoa's swanky Norman Foster-designed European headquarters at Albion Riverside in Battersea. [See photo]

Atrato has been moored off Albion Riverside since at least June 1983, when the area wasnt nearly so popular, so when the Port of London Authority (PLA) tried to register its ownership of the site Ashmore asserted "squatter's rights" over that part of the riverbed where Atrato is moored and thus defeat any attempts to move him on.

Deciding a preliminary issue in Ashmore's favour Deputy Judge Stephen Smith QC ruled that "it is possible for the owner of a vessel that is moored in a particular place on a tidal river to acquire title by adverse possession to a part of the river bed where the title to the river bed has not yet been registered and the vessel rests on the bed at low tide."

There are apparently a number of cases "lining up behind this one" but, as yet, there are no reports of any squatters giving up the comforts of Mayfair mansions for the wonders of the muddy riverbanks.

See the judgment here

Photo by Martin Pearce via Flickr

I am feeling sulky today following my ejection by Eady J from Court 13 this morning.

Although there is no property law in the case, I have been following the colourful dispute between "canned-fruit millionaire" Vivian Imerman and his brothers-in-law, the Tchenguizs, since Day 1 and I feel upset when I am denied the opportunity to poke my snout into what is happening - even when it is of no interest to readers of Estates Gazette.

Imerman was ejected from the Mayfair offices the three share following a family row and he is now suing the brothers and three other men, alleging that they took confidential information belonging to him from the premises "in breach of confidence".

Unfortunately we will never know what happens next.

I hate being barred from hearings, I tend to stand outside and look beggingly through the window.

Despite doing my best puppy dog impression however, Eady J was having none of it and I have had to post this to make myself feel better.

A battle has begun in a Hong Kong court room over the estimated US$3.5bn property empire of Asia's richest woman Nina Wang Kung Yu-sum.

The billionaire, dubbed 'Little Sweetie' because of her pigtails and love of mini-skirts, died in 2007 and now her alleged secret lover, feng shui expert Tony Chan, is embroiled in a battle with Wang's Chinachem Charitable Foundation, run by members of her family, for control of the estate.

See the BBC story here

Photo by Kevin Botto via Flickr

A story which is capturing my imagination this Friday afternoon is the link between Cromer Town FC, aka the Crabs, and the death of Norway's King Olav V in 1991.

While this story doesnt have quite the conspiratorial interest of the death of Princess Diana, serious consequences arising from the death could still follow for the Norfolk football stalwarts.

Eviction from Cabbell Park, the Crabs home ground, is on the cards as a result of the terms of the ground's bequest by local philanthropist Evelyn Bond-Cabbell in 1922 - Bond-Cabbell made the gift as a memorial to those killed in the First World War.

Under the terms of the bequest the club's lease was to expire 21 years after the death of Queen Victoria's last surviving grandchild - Olav V was that grandson, with the result that the club faces eviction in 2012.

While the trustees can allow the club to stay on, for the Crabs sake I hope the ground doesn't have too much development potential.

The Beeb's story is here