Marlborough News Online needs to make a correction to this report:
A statement from Chester Moore says: “Mr Moore was not removed as a trustee on account of his being in receipt of self-remuneration as your article states.”
“…The judge thought Mr Moore should be removed due to the breakdown in relations between him and Lord Cardigan, …”
We should add that the judge wrote: “The lion’s share of responsibility for that breakdown ought, I think, to be laid at Lord Cardigan’s door (and that of Mr Bloom) [Lord Cardigan’s legal adviser.]” But the judge also cited the criminal accusations Mr Moore had brought against Lord Cardigan and several uncontested occasions when Mr Moore ‘harassed’ (our word) Lord Cardigan and his wife.
The judge also wrote: “In different circumstances, Mr Moore would, I am sure, have performed his duties as a trustee of the Trust perfectly well. As things are, however, I consider that he should be removed as a trustee.” And Mr Moore has been ordered to repay the self-remuneration money.
Following the High Court’s decision last November to remove Mr John Moore as a trustee of the trust that controls the Savernake Estate, the Earl of Cardigan is seeking leave to appeal over Judge Newey’s decision to fail to remove the other trustee, Mr Wilson Cotton (of City accountants Smith & Williamson.)
The High Court found that Mr Cotton had expressly authorised (as the one professional trustee) the unlawful self-remuneration of £118,000 to John Moore. It was because of this self-remuneration that Mr Moore was ordered to stand down as co-trustee and to repay all of that sum. He is also due to pay £32,000 in damages and pay £51,000 to Lord Cardigan in costs.
The High Court also found Mr Cotton to be in Breach of Trust in regard to the mismanagement of a major Savernake Estate property, for which he was ordered to pay compensation to the Estate.
Lord Cardigan told Marlborough News Online: “For these reasons I am appealing against the decision to let him continue, when I want him to resign, and my father the Marquess of Ailesbury, who created the trust in question, has also written to him, telling him to stand down.”
Mr Moore is no longer a trustee and his place has been taken by Lord Cardigan’s nominee Simon Weil, who is a professional trustee.
Mr Weil is a senior partner with the London solicitors Bircham Dyson Bell. He specialises in charities, philanpthopy, trusts and ‘the resolution of potentially contentious issues arising out of wills, trusts and co-ownership of property’. Among his ‘career highlights’ mentioned on the firm’s website is “resolving a bitter family dispute arising out of the estate of a millionairess.”
In another case he acted “for the two minor beneficiaries of a Cayman Islands trust, worth in excess of one hundred million pounds, in a dispute that had arisen between the trustee and their clients’ father who, although excluded from benefit under the terms of the trust but acting in concert with the protector whom he had appointed, claimed that he was entitled to receive $1 million per annum from the trust for life.”
“As a result of a very robust stance, designed to achieve a settlement which would both minimise the loss to the trust fund and avoid a contentious court hearing, but which always included the option of going through with a trial, the dispute was finally resolved, over three years after it had begun.”
Mr Weil’s appointment means that the intentions of the other trustee to split up the estate – almost certainly involving the sale of the freehold of Savernake Forest – cannot proceed and the Forest is safe. [See separate feature article.]
Meanwhile, the future of Tottenham House after its sale is still unclear.
Saved again: back from the brink just like in the 1890s – Savernake Forest is no longer in danger of being sold off
