A judge has ruled in a family dispute over delays to a hotel and residential redevelopment in Tooting, south London, awarding the company that owns it almost £1.4m in damages.
Barrowfen Properties – part of an international group of businesses owned by four brothers, Rajnikant Patel, Yashwant Patel, Girish Patel and Suresh Patel – sued its own former director, Girish, and the solicitors firm that acted for him, Stevens & Bolton, over a 55-month delay to works at 180-214 Upper Tooting Road, SW17.
Barrowfen made a number of allegations relating to the corporate governance of the company between November 2013 and July 2015, and claimed that between those dates Girish committed a number of breaches of his statutory duties as a director in order to prevent Suresh, and Rajnikant’s son Prashan, taking control of the company away from him. It alleged that Girish designed and implemented a plan to put Barrowfen into administration to enable him to buy the Tooting property and that Stevens & Bolton assisted him to do so.
Finding in Barrowfen’s favour in a highly complex, 322-page judgment, judge Tom Leech QC provisionally awarded damages of £1,388,768.
He found that Girish had breached his duties in numerous respects and that, while Stevens & Bolton had not been in breach of fiduciary duty, it had been negligent.
Wandsworth Borough Council first granted planning permission for what was initially a hotel and student accommodation redevelopment, comprising 83 hotel bedrooms and 75 student rooms, in April 2014. The scheme was subsequently revised to 78 hotel bedrooms and 99 student rooms, and then in 2018 residential accommodation was substituted for the student accommodation. The judge said that the development was finally nearing completion as at March 2021.
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