Ardfields has to pay
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• A lorry driver bluffed his way into a warehouse and made off with precious metals worth thousands of pounds, the High Court in London has heard.
The driver was never traced, but in the High Court an Edgware haulage company was ordered to pay the Dutch metal dealers 223,000 damages.
Ardfields Transport was contracted by Amsterdambased Metaalhandel J A Magnus to pick up 12 drums of tungsten from a foundry and store them in a warehouse in Porters Wood, St Albans in January 1984.
Ardfields — based in Edgware — then found it did not have room in its St Albans warehouse for the drums so it sub-contracted the haulage and storage to Jones Transport of Ashford, Middx, who has since gone broke.
In October 1984 Metaalhandel wanted the tungsten shipped to West Germany — but Ardfield had to report that it had disappeared, according to Richard Lord, representing the Dutch company.
Justice Gatehouse heard that if Ardfields wanted goods moved on from Jones' warehouse it would simply ring in advance with no ring-back security system.
A storeman at Jones remembered a phone call in August 1984 in which a man claiming to be from Ardfields said a driver would collect the tungsten later. The court was told that a driver turned up with a photocopied letter from Ardfields with no name, signature or reference number on it and left with the tungsten. The judge ruled that the storeman had nothing to do with the theft, but accused him of inventing the phone call when he realised the documents were bogus. Gatehouse described Jones' warehouse as insecure and the storeman as negligent, but as the company had ceased trading the action had to be taken against Ardfields.
Ardfields, asked for a proportion of the judgement to be recoverable from Jones and Gatehouse agreed that it was 75% to blame. Ardfields will have to pay the full £23,000, but may try and recover 75% from Jones.