Lord Rotherwick emerged as the winner in the High Court today in a dispute over the lease of shooting rights at his Cornbury Park Estate in Oxfordshire.
At the end of a case that is estimated to have run up £1m in legal costs, Lloyd J dismissed claims by Michael Murphy that Lord Rotherwick had breached the conditions of an April 1995 lease under which Murphy conducted the shoot at Cornbury Park Estate.
Murphy had claimed that during 1995 and 1996 Lord Rotherwick failed to provide him with land suitable for rearing pheasant chicks. He also claimed that Lord Rotherwick failed to provide an adequate water supply in 1996 and that, as a result, a number of birds were either never born, died or became diseased.
Lord Rotherwick was accused of orchestrating a deliberate campaign of harassment against Murphy with the intention of driving the shoot out of business.
In cross-proceedings Lord Rotherwick had sought injunctions and damages against Murphy in relation to alleged breaches of the lease.
He claimed that pheasants reared and released by Mr Murphy had done considerable damage to growing or harvested crops and that the death of deer on the estate had been caused by the administration of emtryl to the pheasants by Mr Murphy.
Murphy was ordered to pay the costs of the case. The court also ordered that he should release no more than 50,000 pheasants a year over the estate and that he should not feed emtryl to birds in areas where there were likely to be deer.
PLS News 21/12/99
