Victorious win for Looe Fuels after a 2 year legal battle

Looe Fuels Limited and its solicitors, Follett Stock, are celebrating a significant legal victory today.

The 2 year-long dispute over the fate of the refuelling facility in Looe Harbour has finally been resolved in the favour of the company, which has run the facility for the last 20 years.

A panel of three Court of Appeal judges, led by Lord Justice Longmore, upheld an earlier judgment in favour of the current fuel provider, Looe Fuels Limited.  This, combined with another related judgment in favour of Looe Fuels by a High Court judge, means that five senior judges have found in favour of Looe Fuels.

This is a severe embarrassment to the Looe Harbour Commissioners who have maintained their resistance to Looe Fuels despite repeated court decisions against them.

Looe Harbour Commissioners are elected by the people of Looe to oversee the running of the harbour.  The Commissioners have a large number of tenants occupying various businesses around the harbour.  One of these is Looe Fuels Limited, which was formed by 65 harbour users in 1988 to ensure the continuation of an economic supply of marine gas oil to all fishermen and other harbour users.

Mike Soady, a long-serving director of the company and also an elected Commissioner, identified a chance to renew the existing ageing facility through an FIFG Objective 1 grant.  As the harbour commission could obtain a much larger grant than the company, Mr Soady agreed with the Commissioners in 2004 that they would apply for the grant and, if successful, issue a new lease to the company to run it.  This made economic sense to all concerned, the impact on the fuel price being minimal.  The Court of Appeal later described the deal as “a remarkably good bargain” for the Commissioners.

Despite this the Commissioners later decided to go back on their agreement and to run the new facility themselves, which would have forced Looe Fuels into liquidation.

The Commissioners’ volte face became apparent to Looe Fuels when the new facility was being put in place by the Commissioners in April 2006 and the Commissioners served Looe Fuels with notice to quit.  

Using law firm Follett Stock, well known for its heavyweight litigation expertise, Looe Fuels immediately applied to the courts to prevent this. 

Looe Fuels and Follett Stock launched a successful Judicial Review against the Commissioners and, in April 2007, obtained a judgment from Mr Justice Stanley Burnton in the Administrative Court in London confirming that it was unlawful for the Harbour Commissioners to buy or sell fuel or run the new facility themselves.  Looe Fuels hoped that that would be the end of the dispute, but the Commissioners continued to maintain that they were not bound to grant the new lease to Looe Fuels.

His Honour Judge Griggs disagreed.  After a full trial in Truro last June he found that the Commissioners were indeed bound to grant the new lease to Looe Fuels and ordered them to do so.

Still not content with this judgment, the Commissioners then embarked on an appeal to the Court of Appeal in London.  The three senior judges, Lord Justice Longmore, Lord Justice Rix and Sir Robin Auld, unanimously agreed that HHJ Griggs’s earlier judgment was correct.

Commenting on this decision, Mike Soady said: “Common sense and justice have prevailed at last.  This battle has been long and tough.  This is a triumph for a small business and a longstanding tenant over a landlord who tried to take over the tenant’s trade and put it out of business with the loss of the 3 employees’ jobs.  The trustees have, for 2 years, used the harbour’s financial resources against the tenant.  Their actions have cost the harbour a vast amount of money over the last 2 years.”  

Martin Pearse, the Follett Stock partner who led the successful legal team throughout the last two years, commented:

“We are very pleased with this result.  Three times we have been to trial with Looe Fuels and three times we have won decisively.  This comes on top of several other hard-won victories for Follett Stock in the High Court recently and marks us out as Cornwall’s leading litigation practice.

“It is no easy thing for a small company, effectively a co-operative of local boat-owners, to take on a large and rich organisation like the Looe Harbour Commissioners, especially over the course of two years in four different courts.  The company’s perseverance has paid off.  Mike Soady has adopted a very principled approach to this dispute.  A lesser man might have given up long ago, but Mike has a strong sense of justice and on behalf of the many and varied shareholders was not prepared to see the company that he oversees go under as a result of the Harbour Commissioners going back on their agreement.”