We beat the notorious business rate chancers
When a company sues four of its own clients in one week it might suggest that the problem lies with the company and not the clients.
RVA Surveyors Limited, a regular in this column, had four cases listed in courts last week, claiming it was owed commission for securing cuts in business rates for clients.
Among the defendants was clothes and accessories outlet Sox-U-Wear Limited of Battle, East Sussex, run by Barry and Dee Foggon.
They’re adamant that the only paperwork they signed was what the sales rep said was his time sheet.
RVA later said they’d signed a contract and owed £6,000.
Hastings county court heard that supposed signatures on the contract did not even correctly spell the name “Foggon”.
The judge threw out RVA’s claim and refused permission to appeal. “All in all a great result,” said Barry. Meanwhile RVA was set to sue three clients at Manchester county court on the same day. Two of the cases were adjourned and it lost the third, against air compressor company Hertz Kompressoren.
The RVA sales rep told Hertz managing director Graeme Middleton-Duff that it would take a 45% cut for obtaining a retrospective rates cut dating back five years.
“I asked if there was anything else to pay and he said ‘no’,” Mr Middleton-Duff told the court.
“He said there was nothing more to pay other than for the last five years.”
But then RVA sued for £1,598, saying the contract also extended five years into the future and a clause excluded it from “any liability whatsoever” for what its sales rep had stated. Mr Middleton-Duff’s lawyer told the court that this failed “the reasonability test”.
“Thanks to the Daily Mirror for exposing this company,” he said after the hearing.