Blue Cars Gain £45,000 Damages
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IN the Queen's Bench Division on I Monday the former director of a number of coach tour companies was ordered to pay £45,000 damages for breaking a covenant not to opetate Continental coach tours for seven years after selling his businesses.
The British Electric Traction Co., Ltd., of Stratton House, Piccadilly, were awarded the damages "against Mr. Thomas Edwin Langton and Luxury Land Cruises, Ltd., of Piccadilly, from whom they bought the businesses for £126,000 in 1953. They alleged that Mr. Langton operated another company— Sky Tours—in competition with them between 1955-57.
Mr. Langton denied that the covenant precluded him from engaging in every type of Continental motor coach tour. if it did, he claimed, it amounted to an unreasonable and unlawful restraint of trade. He challenged the repont of an official referee, Mr. W. K. Carter, Q.C., who found him liable and issessed damages at £50,000.
Giving a reserved judgment, Mr. Justice Pearson said that the award of A./2 a large sum of damages was reasonable. Mr. Langton was in a good position to compete effectively with the main business he had sold—Blue Cars— because he knew its past system and policy and to some extent its prospects and possible future development.
The development of Sky Tours, largely by wrongful competition, must have an important detrimental effect on the building up of the Blue Cars business.
Defendants were ordered to pay four-fifths of the costs of the hearing. A stay of execution pending a possible appeal was granted.
ATLANTIC OUTPUT CONTINUES
THE Atlantic, Super Atlantic and Viscount heavy-duty tractors are now being manufactured by Lomount Vehicles and Engineering, Ltd., Colnbrook, Bucks. They were previously produced by George Rotinoff, Ltd., at the same address. The name has been changed as a result of the reorganization of the Rotinoff group, now known as the Lomount group of companies.