Tenants of restaurant premises obtained judgment against their
landlords for breaches of covenants in their lease. The next stage
of the case was for the court to assess how much compensation
should be paid to the tenants. The landlords made an offer, but the
tenants did not accept it. At that point, the landlords asked us to
represent them.
After nearly two years of preparation for a hearing on
compensation, the tenants accepted the offer the landlords had
made. Payment was delayed. The tenants' solicitors then
obtained a court order, without notice to the landlords. The order
prevented our clients from selling their properties or spending
money from their account.
When we examined the witness statement which a member of the
tenants' solicitors' firm had made, we concluded that it
contained a number of incorrect assertions. But for those
assertions, the Court would not have granted an order described as
a "nuclear option".
