Gordon Ramsay has lost his High Court battle over being held personally liable for the rent on the York & Albany pub near Regent’s Park in north London.
The pub was leased when his father-in-law Christopher Hutcheson was still working in Ramsay’s restaurant organisation, but Ramsay said his signature had been forged – using a ghost writer machine – on the document which made him the personal guarantor for the pub’s rent of £640,000 per year.
The document made him liable for £640,000 annual rent for the York & Albany pub near Regent’s Park, north London.
But Mr Justice Morgan dismissed as “entirely implausible” Gordon Ramsay’s claim he did not know the full extent of the use of the ghost machine, and ruled that he must not only personally pay the annual rent, but also pay the legal bill of film director Gary Love, the owner of the York & Albany, who brought the case.
Christopher Hutcheson acted as business manager for the Ramsay companies until the two parted ‘acrimoniously’ in 2010, and the judge ruled that Hutcheson had been acting ‘within the wide general authority conferred on him by Ramsay until his dismissal’.