Litigation and Alternative Dispute Resolution

Contact: Madlen Searle, Clarkslegal LLP (Reading, England)

You cannot have escaped the recent judgment regarding Gordon Ramsay. For those who haven't heard of him he is a celebrity restaurateur and the star of several TV food programmes including Hell's Kitchen. Splashed all over the news was his recent battle in the High Court regarding the question of his personal liability for the £640,000 annual rent for the York & Albany pub near Regent's Park, which it was claimed he had guaranteed.

The pub deal took place when his father-in-law, Christopher Hutcheson, was in charge of his business affairs, a relationship which very publicly came to an end in 2010 when Mr Hutcheson was sacked, along with Mr Ramsay's brother in law, for gross misconduct. Indeed, during the trial Mr Ramsay's wife, and daughter of Mr Hutcheson, said that the discovery that her father and brother were "systematically defrauding" her husband was "extremely distressing", and Mr Ramsay referred to himself as a "performing monkey" under the control of Mr Hutcheson.

Read the entire article.