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Taxi boss sues over 'conspiracy'
ALLEGATIONS made about the private life of Plymouth taxi mogul John Preece, and the financial health of his companies, seriously damaged a major business deal, a court hearing has been told.
Bosses at a firm which was about to conclude a lucrative deal with Mr Preece's Taxibank operation were told he had an affair with an employee, staff accessed pornographic websites at work and how Mr Preece's firms were in financial dire straits, the civil hearing heard. This caused the business deal to suffer a costly delay, it was claimed.
Mr Preece's Key Cabs firm is also claiming it was 'bombarded' with a stream of insulting emails, faxes and texts. One even offered the Taxifast chairman use of a chamber pot, claiming, in a metaphor for financial paucity, that he did not have one of his own to use.
Key Cabs, which trades as Taxifast and owns most of Taxibank, is now suing bespoke tailor John Kingdom and two former Taxifast employees, Phil Manning and Dean Ruffles, at the High Court in Bristol.
Mr Preece is claiming they were behind the conspiracy which resulted in delays to the deal with event management agency Expotel. It is alleged the three worked together to spread allegations to Expotel bosses and Taxifast's own drivers, some of whom were shareholders in the firm, which said the company was in financial difficulty.
They did this, it is alleged, via telephone calls to Expotel, by discussions with private hire drivers, and via two newsletters attributed to a taxi firm, called Unicabs, set up by Messrs Kingdom, Manning and Ruffles.
The motive remains unclear, Taxifast's barrister David Fletcher told Judge Mark Havelock-Allan at the Chancery Division hearing. However, he told the court Mr Ruffles, Taxifast's former operations manager, may have been motivated by an affair Mr Preece conducted with his wife Jane Ruffles.
Mr Fletcher told the court Taxifast was suing for conspiracy to injure, and harassment. But this hearing, scheduled for four days, would just deal with the issue of liability – whether the three defendants, who deny the allegations, conspired to injure and harassed Taxifast.
If they are found liable, another hearing would be called to decide damages. The court was also told Mr Preece had dropped an additional claim against the defendants for damages to his business reputation.
Mr Fletcher told the court Expotel was on the verge of signing a money-spinning taxi brokerage deal with Mr Preece's Taxibank company in February 2007. This was expected to create 200 jobs in Plymouth.
Mr Fletcher claimed 'everybody knew about the Expotel contract in this company', including Mr Ruffles and Mr Manning, who were both employed by Taxifast at that time.
But as the deal was about to be finalised an unidentified man rang Expotel and said Taxibank was 'financially in debt', 'the chairman had run off with his wife' and 'employees looked at pornography online at the company', the court heard.
During the next two months there were two further calls, one from the same man, one from an anonymous woman. Mr Fletcher said in March 2007, Mr Ruffles approached Taxifast driver Matj Lehocky and the barrister quoted from a transcript of their conversation, where Mr Ruffles talked about Unicabs and how 'John has got no money'.
Mr Fletcher said: "Unicabs was a front from start to finish, an excuse for a campaign of vilification that they undertook." He said two newsletters, connected to Unicabs, a licensed firm which never traded, were distributed to taxi drivers and Expotel.
One was described as 'an embarrassing document attacking Mr Preece personally' and accusing him of 'gratuitous bullying' of his drivers. The second was 'a generalised attack on Mr Preece' accusing him of 'philandering and gambling', and 'suggesting something improper to do with investment of drivers' money'.
Mr Fletcher spoke of emails sent to Taxifast, including one claiming Mr Kingdom had lent money to Mr Preece. This, Mr Fletcher told the court, was 'a figment of Mr Kingdom's imagination', and said: "John Kingdom is living in a Walter Mitty world."
The defendants, representing themselves, later cross-examined Taxifast managing director Simon Hirst, claiming Taxifast's deal with Expotel, which eventually went ahead, had not been the financial success the firm predicted, but it was not as a result of anything the defendants had done.
They also claimed Mr Ruffles and Mr Manning had not been at Taxifast meetings where the Expotel deal was discussed in 2006, and therefore could not have known about it.
Mr Manning asked why minutes of daily staff meetings had not been produced, to reveal who was present. Mr Hirst explained the meetings were short and the only notes taken were when actions needed to be carried out.
The trial, which is due to conclude on Thursday, continues today.
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