DJ Rob da Bank cleared of bad Bestival loans

ARTICLE

DJ Rob da Bank cleared of bad Bestival loans

The Ticketline Network Limited v (1) Mr Robert Gorham and (2) Mr John Hughes

Cases concerning oral agreements are always difficult, whether you are trying to prove that one existed, or to deny that one was ever formed. There is often the panic of finding what appears at first to be an email fatal to your client’s case, and the concern that your client’s credibility will be torn to shreds under the pressure of crossexamination. However, most disputes over oral agreements do not include a forged mortgage deed that needs to be answered for.

That is what happened to Robert Gorham, a DJ who goes by the stage name “Rob da Bank”, when he found himself on the wrong end of a claim for £649,000 plus interest arising out of what the Claimant, Ticketline, alleged to be two oral loan agreements, one of which it claimed to be secured by a mortgage deed over Mr Gorham’s family home.

Prior to it entering administration in September 2018, Mr Gorham was a director of Bestival Limited, which owned and operated the well-known music festival, Bestival. Mr Gorham was responsible for the creative side of the festival, including securing artists such as Stevie Wonder and Elton John. Financial matters were primarily dealt with by his co-director, John Hughes – who was also a defendant to these proceedings but declined to defend the claims against him.

Since the early 2000s, Ticketline had worked closely with Bestival and, over the course of their business relationship, Ticketline advanced millions of pounds to Bestival to support its cashflow in the run up to each annual festival. Those advances were recouped through ticket sales, and no formal paperwork was ever drawn up in this respect.

These proceedings, which were heard before HHJ Johns QC over the course of 6 days in May 2022, concerned two such payments made by Ticketline to Bestival: the first payment in the sum of £750,000 in July 2016, and the second payment in the sum of £249,000 in August 2018. However, unlike the previous advances made by Ticketline to Bestival, Ticketline claimed that these two payments were actually loans made by Ticketline to Mr Gorham and Mr Hughes personally.

Both of Ticketline’s claims failed.

The Judge found in respect of the first payment, for which Ticketline claimed £400,000 remained outstanding, that the contemporaneous documentation did not support it being a personal loan to Mr Gorham. However, of more significance was that the Judge found that even if Mr Gorham had agreed to be personally liable for the loan, he was not satisfied based on Ticketline’s own ledgers that any sum remained outstanding that could be claimed from Mr Gorham.

As for the second payment, the Judge’s findings relied heavily on his conclusions surrounding the mortgage deed. Disproving the veracity of the mortgage deed was an uphill struggle for Mr Gorham: as the Judge explained, it was inherently improbable that the signatures of Mr Gorham and his wife on the mortgage deed had been forged.

Unfortunately for Ticketline, the oral evidence of its witnesses was such that the Judge found, in this case, it was more probable than not that someone other than Mr Gorham and his wife signed the mortgage deed. One difficulty for Ticketline was that none of its own directors were present when the mortgage deed was allegedly signed. Its claim was therefore reliant on the credibility of the third party said have procured the mortgage, and other people present at the time in question.

The oral evidence of two of the other people present, including Mr Hughes (who had admitted to signing a similar mortgage deed) and the individual who “witnessed” the signatures on the deed itself, was that they had not actually seen Mr Gorham put pen to paper on any documents at all. This, coupled with the unexplained disappearance of the original signed mortgage deed (leaving only a grainy photo sent by text message from a third party on the day in question), caused the Judge to have doubts that Mr Gorham signed the mortgage deed. And it followed that the Judge found Mr Gorham did not agree to personal liability for the second payment.

The judgment in these proceedings was detailed and thorough, but it leaves one significant unanswered question: who forged the mortgage deed? It was not the Judge’s role to make that finding, but it is a question that Ticketline may wish to find an answer to now that its routes of recovery against Mr Gorham and Bestival have closed.

Russell Strong

Russell Strong

Partner, Disputes, and Head of Marine and International Greenwoods

Sara Roden

Sara Roden

Associate, Disputes Greenwoods