The Earl of Cardigan says he is delighted with his victory in the High Court today (November 7) in a judgment that saw both estate trustees ordered to pay compensation to the estate and the honorary estate trustee, John Moore, ordered to repay all he had taken in self-remuneration – and he was removed as a trustee by the court.
This victory comes less than a month after Lord Cardigan lost his attempt in the Appeal Court to stop the sale of Tottenham House that was negotiated by the two trustees. Today’s High Court judgment had been reserved until the Appeal Court had made its ruling on the separate case.
Lord Cardigan, who is 61, lives on the estate with his second wife and their year-old child.
In his High Court judgment Mr Justice Newey ordered that John Moore (the trustee of Lord Cardigan’s Savernake Estate with whom he had fallen out) be removed as a trustee and must repay to the trust the £118,000 which he took as unlawful remuneration. Mr Justice Newey also found Mr Moore to be in breach of trust on two further counts and he, together with his co-trsutee, was ordered to pay damages to the Savernake Estate.
Speaking exclusively to Marlborough News Online Lord Cardigan commented: “The fact that he’s being removed and ordered to repay the money vindicates the action I took – I now look forward to restoring the damage done to the Savernake Estate by its two Trustees during the last six years.”
This judgment has no impact on the sale of Tottenham House or the terms of that sale. The future of the estate will be heavily dependent on the new trustee who will replace Mr Moore once the sale of Tottenham House is complete.
In a lengthy 271 paragraph judgment, the High Court Judge criticised Mr. Moore for his conduct as a trustee. The numerous criminal charges laid against Lord Cardigan by Mr Moore, which he has always believed were contrived to discredit him and to dissuade him from taking action in the High Court against the trustees, received particular attention from the Judge. In removing Mr. Moore as a Trustee, the Judge said :
“Mr Moore has either initiated complaints or provided evidence in support of some 17 criminal accusations against Lord Cardigan. While some of these have not been proceeded with or remain to be tried, it was, it seems, following Lord Cardigan’s acquittal on two charges in January 2013 that Mr Moore (as explained by Lord Cardigan’s second wife, the present Countess of Cardigan) lost his temper and drove a Land Rover across the lawn at Savernake Lodge. Lady Cardigan also testified without contradiction about an occasion when Mr Moore “screamed at [Lord Cardigan] to ‘Get off your lazy backside and get a job’” and another when Mr Moore turned his car round and “began to drive slowly alongside us shouting at [Lord Cardigan] to talk to him” before “taunting [Lord Cardigan]……….”. In similar vein, the video of the incident on 15 April 2013 that I mentioned in paragraph 84 above might be said to show Mr Moore taunting Lord Cardigan……..”
The issue of Mr Moore’s unlawful self-remuneration as an honorary trustee lay at the heart of the case. A few weeks earlier in the Court of Appeal, when considering the sale of Tottenham House, Lord Justice Vos said:
“There is no doubt, in my judgment, that the fact that Mr Moore had been in unlawful receipt of trust assets was relevant to the determination that both judges had to make. The monies ought properly to have been repaid pending the determination of the counterclaim in the removal action, and, had they been, the financial position of the trust would have been commensurately improved.”
Today’s High Court judgment is unequivocal about Mr Moore’s position regarding payments: “It is now common ground that Mr Moore, unlike Mr Cotton [the other trustee], was not in fact entitled to charge for his services.”
Mr Justice Newey states that even if he had authorised the payment to Mr Moore retrospectively, as Mr Moore had asked him to do, he would have only awarded him one sixth of what he had been paid.
Lord Cardigan commented: “At a minimum Mr Moore had kept £100,000 of money which was not his and would never had been his, even if the Judge had retrospectively authorised it. As it turned out, the Judge made clear that the entire sum of £118,000 should never had been taken”.
This ruling was of great personal significance to Lord Cardigan – as he explained to Marlborough News Online: “For the last four years, I’ve not received a penny from the trust. I’ve had to live in a wholly-unheated house that a Marlborough estate agent called ‘uninhabitable’, with zero hot water, all because the Savernake Estate trustees kept claiming that ‘the cupboards were bare’ and that the trust simply had no money.”
“What has now become clear beyond doubt is that Mr. Moore had unlawfully been paid this money from my estate and should not have kept it. It was over £100,000. Had I been given that £100,000, it would have meant that I could have properly clothed, fed and provided a warm home for my wife and young baby, instead of having to endure all those “Benefits Baby” headlines .”
Lord Cardigan had for a time to claim unemployment benefits while he trained for an HGV driving job.
The Earl of Cardigan’s half uncle, Lord Charles Brudenell-Bruce, an ally of the trustees, who uses one of the estate’s cottages for weekends, also featured in the case. The trustees were found to be in breach of trust for allowing him to use it without paying rent. It is expected that he will shortly be replaced by a paying tenant.
With the High Court judgment now published, Lord Cardigan told us: “The case concerned a number of irregularities in the financial management of the Savernake Estate, which in my view, has been wholly mismanaged by the trustees, culminating in their forced sale of my family home of Tottenham House last month.”
“By ordering Mr Moore to repay his remuneration, removing him as trustee, and forcing both Trustees to compensate the trust for the financial losses they caused the Savernake Estate, there is little doubt that the Court agreed with my view”.
Lord Cardigan still faces four criminal charges, each one either the result of a police complaint from Mr Moore, or organised by Mr Moore. The first of these is a claim by Mr Moore that Lord Cardigan had harassed him at Savernake Lodge where Lord Cardigan lives, and Mr Moore provided as evidence for this criminal trial a video of the incident. It is this video footage which led, in part, to the High Court judge removing Mr Moore as a trustee.
Marlborough News Online asked Lord Cardigan about the oustanding charges against him: “I’m assuming the Crown Prosecution Service will read this judgment and see that – like the High Court – Magistrates Courts will realise the malign mischief that Mr Moore has been up to in an attempt to stop me getting rid of him, and will drop these ridiculous charges.”
So far, has been acquitted of two charges, three have been dropped, one has been downgraded, and the first case due to be heard early in 2015 is a complaint by Mr Moore that Lord Cardigan had harassed him.
As Lord Cardigan explained to Marlborough News Online, he does not see how the charges against him can now proceed: “Given that it was evidence used in this harassment charge that in part led the High Court to remove Mr Moore as a trustee, it would strike me as a complete waste of police and the court’s time for this case to be brought on.”
“Appalling sums of money have had to be spent in order to get rid of that trustee, and this 1000-year-old estate has suffered very grievously since that man was appointed as an honorary trustee after assuring me and others that he was a barrister, when it now turns out he is actually a barrister’s clerk. I must now do whatever I can to re-create calm, prosperity, and good stewardship of this ancient estate.”
Further news of the future of the estate is expected once the new trusteee has taken office. Set out below is a Press Statement received earlier today (8 November) issued by the honorary estate trustee, John Moore.
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