A lack of candour in contractual negotiations can lead to grave financial consequences, as was shown when an event management company that lost its only customer four months after signing a new five-year deal won the right to substantial damages. Company A had for 30 years provided management services to company B in respect of…
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When a family business is handed down and ownership is split between two or more members of the next generation, the result can all too often be discord. Normally, this can be resolved by one party buying out the other, but when this does not occur, the result can be a disaster, as a recent…
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Company directors should know that as well as their duties to shareholders, they also have a duty under both common and statute law to protect the interests of creditors. When this duty is not adhered to, the consequences can be severe, as a recent case illustrates. The director concerned was a director of a group…
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Mixing business and personal relationships can produce additional complications if a break-up occurs, as evidenced by the stalemate reached by a warring former couple who are at loggerheads over the future of their deadlocked business and its intellectual property (IP) rights. The ex-couple were partners in business and in life for 26 years and ran…
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In a case which underlines the need for both full and accurate disclosure of potential liabilities when selling a business, a lawyer who failed to reveal the existence of a potentially substantial negligence claim against his firm before disposing of it will receive a lesser sum for its sale, following a High Court ruling. The…
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Normally, when a building dispute arises that leads to an adjudicator making an award in favour of one party, the award is simply paid to the other party and that is that. However, sometimes things are more complicated. Recently, a company went to the High Court arguing that it should not have to pay an…
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Professional landlords are well aware of the complexities they can face when giving notice to tenants that they require possession of the let premises. Because of the rather tortuous provisions of the Housing Act 1988 with regard to the giving of notice, numerous court rulings have been made that a landlord’s notice to a tenant…
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Not every breach of contract will be treated as ‘repudiatory’ – the legal term for a breach in which one side has refused to perform its side of the contract. Recently, the High Court ruled that one party’s refusal to pay an arbitrator’s fees in advance did not ‘go to the root’ of the parties’…
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When a company enters administration, the expenses it has incurred prior to the administration have a different status from the expenses incurred by the administrators. These latter expenses are in effect preferential to the former. This is important for landlords because it is now common for companies with leased premises to have large liabilities for…
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