Punch Taverns is to face court claims over the validity and accuracy of information it provided about a pub's trade to former County Estate Management head of pubs Philip Sambell.
Sambell, who used to be in charge of managing 1,000 pubs on behalf of clients such as Pubfolio, signed a lease at the Robin Hood in Sherwood, Nottingham in the summer of 2007 with partners Julian Phillips and David Hope.
Since then they have invested their life savings of £90,000 into the pub — a former John Barras managed house — but despite the investment, they claim the pub's fortunes have been blighted by the terms of the lease, which they claim was based on false figures.
Now the trio are preparing to take on Punch in a legal fight to prove they were misled into entering a business arrangement which could only end in failure for them.
Sambell, who has 30-years trade experience under his belt, claims that the barrelage figures provided by Punch were 30% higher than the real figure. "That's a difference of around 65,000 pints a year, a huge amount in financial terms which meant all our predicted takings were meaningless," he said.
He claims that he discovered the discrepancy when granted access to Brulines monitoring data for the previous year when it ran as a managed house but Punch disputes this.
Negotiations
Sambell said that Punch refused to negotiate on reducing the rent. "Even at this late stage we are prepared to sit down and try to thrash out an agreement which compensates us for our losses and sets a level playing field for the future, however even our offer of independent mediation has been refused," he said.
"We have invested our life-savings and three years of our lives into this business and do not want to walk away but Punch just does not seem interested which we find strange if compared to their public stance."
At a preliminary hearing last year the trio won a partial victory when they were released from their tie to Punch pending the outcome of the case which is listed for five days beginning on Monday, 15 March.
A Punch spokesman said: "It's not possible for us to comment in full at this stage, as we would not wish to prejudice the outcome of the case. However, we are confident that the judicial system will resolve this issue."
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