Judge: Don’t mix business with pleasure, salesman and a dominatrix told
Source: Westerndailypress.co.uk.
UK – A judge reminded a salesman and a dominatrix who became embroiled in a court fight after setting up a company together that it was “unwise to mix business with pleasure”.
Stephen Dawson and Laura Bell became embroiled in litigation after their personal and business relationships ended, courts heard.
He claimed that he had been “coerced” into entering a share price agreement.
She denied it and claimed that he had “misappropriated” company funds.
Mr Dawson lost the first round following a hearing in a specialist commercial court in Bristol before Judge Mark Havelock-Allan, and then failed in a challenge at the Court of Appeal in London.
The two rulings were made public on Friday when three appeal judges formally dismissed Mr Dawson’s appeal.
Judge Havelock-Allan had explained how the case concerned the “unravelling of the parties’ business and property interests following the breakdown of their personal relationship and the termination of their relationship in business together”.
“There is an old adage that it is unwise to mix business with pleasure,” Judge Havelock-Allan had said. “This case is perhaps a paradigm example.”
The pair had met in 2001, judges heard.
He was a salesman who ran a “fetish website with a Mistress Directory” as a “side-line”.
She was a dominatrix who had a “femdom website” and lived in Tower Hamlets, east London.
They had begun a “personal” relationship, set up a firm which “marketed adult videos” and bought a flat in Bristol.
Their personal and business relationships had broken down and by 2014 litigation had started.
Judge Havelock-Allan ruled that Mr Dawson should pay his former partner more than £30,000 damages.
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