Enterprise is very pleased to confirm that yesterday His Honour Judge Behrens sitting in the High Court in London issued judgment in favour of Enterprise in legal proceedings against Karl Harrison of Fair Pint and the Bedford Public House in Balham. This judgment confirmed our long standing firm view that the position adopted by Mr Harrison was untenable, his defence and counterclaims ill-advised and misjudged and that this was an extraordinarily expensive and unsuccessful legal excursion which was entirely unnecessary. Costs were awarded in favour of Enterprise, and Mr Harrison’s company has been given 14 days in which to make a significant payment on account of those costs.
In March 2010, Karl Harrison delivered an ultimatum that he would remove flow monitoring equipment installed at the Bedford Public House unless Enterprise did so first. Enterprise has always been certain that the installation and operation of the equipment was expressly permitted under the terms of the lease of the premises and that the equipment was lawful, fit for purpose and accurate. There was an extremely close correlation at the Bedford between the data produced by the flow monitoring equipment installed and the quantities of products delivered for dispense by Enterprise.
In our view, and not for the first time, the conduct of Mr Harrison fell short of the standards of acceptable commercial behaviour between landlord and tenant. Notwithstanding our attempts to resolve the matter amicably, Mr Harrison made it clear that his threat would not be withdrawn, and challenged Enterprise to seek an injunction which would enable him to “ventilate the matter fully in court.”
Mr Harrison has made a number of well publicised calls for tenants to take similar actions against their landlords. He has repeatedly made public allegations about the lawfulness and accuracy of the flow monitoring equipment installed by Enterprise – accusations which unfortunately have been regularly repeated in public forums including before parliamentary select committees.
Early in these proceedings Mr Harrison had sought to challenge the accuracy of the equipment installed, notwithstanding the close correlation referred to above, and was given the opportunity to file expert evidence to support that contention. Mr Harrison failed to do so, despite being urged to do so by Enterprise, until shortly before the trial and some five months after the court had directed. The evidence he did serve was flawed and the expert retained by Mr Harrison failed to adopt procedures for testing recommended by the National Measurement Office or Trading Standards. Furthermore, Mr Harrison’s expert admitted that she did not know the full details of how the equipment operated. Mr Harrison has previously relied upon an expert report which was also seriously flawed with tests having been performed on the wrong equipment. Fairpint have repeatedly failed to make this basic error clear in public statements on flow monitoring equipment, including to parliamentary select committees, who have therefore been misled.
Mr Harrison’s defence and counterclaims were entirely unsuccessful and we are pleased that arguments for both sides were carefully considered by the Judge so that these wild allegations have now been shown to be completely without merit. We are delighted that, having heard submissions from leading counsel for both parties, His Honour Judge Behrens was satisfied that Enterprise’s position was correct and that an injunction expressly preventing Mr Harrison from carrying out his threat was accordingly granted.
Ted Tuppen, Chief Executive, commented:
“We are obviously pleased with this result. It has been a drawn out process but given the publicity continuously sought by Mr Harrison and Fairpint, misleading observations and attempts to persuade other innocent parties to follow this course of action, legal proceedings were inevitable. It was a shame this course of action was taken, but Enterprise was obliged to defend its position and we are delighted that the Judge found entirely in our favour.”