Millionaire neighbours in £500k court row over wall
A SUPER-RICH meat baron challenged his multi-millionaire neighbour to fights during a squabble over an adjoining wall, a court heard.
The row began when Robert Heffer, 55 – whose family is said to be worth over £300million – and his wife Lisa bought a building plot for their “dream home” in the affluent seaside suburb of Sandbanks, Dorset.
Next door was a half-acre owned by TV shopping tycoon Ashley Faull, 57, whose company Waterfall Developments Ltd was erecting nine luxury flats worth over £20million.
But when the builders began getting close to the 10ft high boundary wall in April 2021, the Heffers told them they couldn’t touch it because it belonged to them.
Mr Faull told Central London County Court that Mrs Heffer said to him: “It’s our wall. Fact.” Mr Heffer then added “they would injunct him and call police if he touched the wall”.
The builders ended up relocating the foundations in a costly redesign. But Mr Faull found out from a previous occupant that the wall was in fact jointly owned and sued for misrepresentation.
During the threeday hearing the men accused each other of “bullying”, with the Heffers’ barrister Duncan Kynoch telling Mr Faull: “I put it to you that you are a wealthy, litigious and manipulative bully. I suggest that’s your character, I don’t expect you to agree with me.” Mr Faull, who said he was worth £10m-£20million, denied being “litigious” and replied: “I’m certainly not as rich as the Heffers, I think as a family they’re worth between £300-400million, I have only a fraction of that. As to bullying, that’s one of Mr Heffer’s nicknames – ‘the millionaire bully’. He’s twice challenged me to a physical fight.”
He added that on one occasion his neighbour had said, “but for the Covid restrictions, he’d like to come to my house and take me outside”.
Meanwhile, Mrs Heffer told the court she had only ever said, “I believe the wall is ours,” and that the previous owner had told them this.
But Recorder Jamal Demachkie found that the conversation “was invented after it became clear they had been caught out by their lie”.
He ruled that the Heffers must pay Mr Faull’s company £357,507 compensation for the additional building works plus an estimated £147,000 for legal fees, saying: “There was an intention to deceive.”