Three Royal Albert Hall seat holders who claim they have been “unlawfully” deprived of their rights have lost a High Court bid for an injunction against the world-famous venue.
Arthur George, who owns 12 seats in two separate boxes, and William and Alexander Stockler, who together own four seats in one box, claimed they had been unjustly excluded from performances.
They made an application to the High Court for instant victory in the legal claim, an immediate £500,000 payment towards damages, and an injunction against the venue.
But Sir Anthony Mann, the judge overseeing the dispute, ruled on Tuesday that the case should be determined at a full trial.
He found the Corporation of the Hall of Arts and Sciences, commonly known as the Royal Albert Hall (RAH), has “a real prospect of resisting” an injunction at a trial, and rejected the request for summary judgment to end the legal fight.
The three men, who own seats in the Grand Tier, say excluding them from performances is unlawful, and are seeking a High Court order blocking the corporation from restricting their access beyond the terms of the Royal Albert Hall Act 1966.
They believe they have a “proprietary right to use their seats, or to otherwise sell or give away their tickets”.
The corporation argues the dispute is complex and potentially fuelled by soured relationships between the hall management and the seat holders.
The corporation says members have been excluded on occasions, and it accepts this is done in a long-standing departure from the rules set out in the law.
But it says this system was approved by members by way of a document titled Memorandum and Guidelines, and has only recently been challenged.
David Satwell, representing Mr George and the Stocklers, told the High Court earlier this month: “This isn’t a breach of contract case, we say this is a wrongful use of someone else’s property.
“We say, if you take someone else’s property and use it, you are liable to compensate the property owner for that use.
“One of the questions is, ‘how would those claimants have used their seats?’.
“Would they have gone there, would they have sold them, or would they have not used them at all?
“What a property owner does with their property is a matter for them.”
He added: “If seats have been taken away wrongly, we say you would then have to consider what the value of those seats would have been.”
In written submissions, Mr Satwell said: “It is not disputed by the parties that the corporation has exceeded its power … by granting more exclusive lets than it is permitted to do under that provision, that it has been doing so for a number of years, and that it intends to do so into the future.
“In 2008, the corporation acknowledged to the members that it had, for several years, been exceeding its entitlement … to treat events as exclusive lets.”
In written submissions for the corporation, Simon Taube KC said: “The claimants, who have each been members of the corporation since before 2008, appear not to have voted against the Memorandum and Guidelines until the 2023 AGM.”
He added: “The background to the claim is that in recent years the claimants’ relations with the corporation have deteriorated because of the claimants’ complaints about various financial matters.”
Mr Taube also said: “The corporation’s case, in very brief outline, is that even if the claimants can identify a theoretical interference with their rights, it does not damage the claimants as members and, in any case, the corporation has a defence based on the claimants’ consent to or acquiescence in the granting of additional exclusives.”
