12:38 pm, March 23, 2018
A £21.5 MILLION claim brought against BCA Trading Limited by the founder of Tradeouts Limited has been dismissed by the High Court.
The claim by Tradeouts – a digital platform connecting car dealers – arose out of BCA’s purchase of 51 per cent of its shares from founder David Brown and his business partner in 2014.
But following a 12-day High Court trial in October, BCA said today that the unfair prejudice case brought by Brown had been unconditionally dismissed and that it had been awarded undisclosed costs.
BCA said Brown’s claim made wide-ranging allegations of bad faith against BCA, accusing BCA and its employees of having deliberately sought to damage Tradeouts to neutralise it as a competitor and prevent Brown being paid under earn-out provisions of the acquisition documents. It said Brown also accused the BCA-nominated directors of Tradeouts of breaches of their directors’ duties.
The allegations were comprehensively rejected, and BCA said the court, pictured, found that the bad faith case was ‘contrary to the contemporaneous documents, far-fetched and verging on the irrational’. The court also found that Brown had planned from summer 2015 onwards to disclaim his responsibilities to Tradeouts and, instead, manoeuvre into a stronger position to abandon the company and sue BCA, it said.
Martin Letza, BCA Group legal director and company secretary, said: ‘We are delighted with the outcome of the case and very much welcome the wholesale dismissal of Mr Brown’s claims.
‘Some of our witnesses at the trial faced what the judge described as “extreme and sometimes convoluted attacks on their honesty”. The rejection of any suggestion of dishonesty by those witnesses is especially gratifying, and we are very grateful to those colleagues and former colleagues who took part in the trial process.’
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