A London High Court judge has ruled in the case of two millionaire brothers who are in dispute over the ownership of a £2m Regents Park penthouse.
William Fattal, 82, claims that the flat – on Nottingham Terrace, NW1 – should be transferred back to him because his brother, Elias Fattal, 79, didn’t pay him when he sold him the property in 1990.
The two brothers have had a long career in business, working together and selling one of their companies, Roboserve Limited, for £18m in 1987.
The pair lived tother in the property until William moved out in 1990. In that year, Elias says he agreed to buy the property from his brother for the then market value of £400,000. While the formal transference didn’t occur at the time, William assumed at the time his brother had paid.
Twenty-three years later, in 2013, the property was transferred as part of a tax rationalisation plan.
However, in 2017 the brothers fell out and William began to suspect his brother had never actually paid him for the property. The dispute escalated and ended up in a High Court trial held last month.
In a ruling handed down earlier this week, deputy master Hansen ruled that William had managed to prove that Elias never paid him, and stated that William was the beneficial owner of the penthouse.
The case, the judge said in his ruling, was complicated by time and the intricate business dealings carried out by the brothers. Elias couldn’t specify exactly how he paid his brother, but in itself, that didn’t make it an open-and-shut case as William was himself “not a man for detail, particularly when it came to accounting matters”.
“Unless,” the judge added, “that detail related to (legitimate) means of avoiding or mitigating tax which seems to have been a predominant concern of both brothers”.
In fact, the tax mitigation issue added to the complexity of the document trail because, the judge said, professional advisers had been directed to focus on that issue, and therefore didn’t necessarily question the titles or ownership.
Even so, after hearing the evidence of the brothers and others involved in the case, the judge sided with William.
“I proceed on the basis that the legal burden is on William to prove that Elias has not paid him for the property and I find that he has discharged that burden,” he said.
He said he reached that conclusion on “the totality of the evidence” as well as, among other things, his assessment of the credulity of the brothers and the documents that were available.
“Elias’ whole case on payment seems to me to be entirely speculative in circumstances where, notwithstanding the passage of time, I would have expected him to be able to give a reasonably clear account of how and when he paid for the interest.
“There will therefore be judgment for the claimant, a declaration that the claimant is and has at all material times been the sole beneficial owner of the property, an order that the defendant transfer the property to the claimant and an order for the taking of an account.
“I cannot leave the case without also expressing the hope that William and Elias can resolve their other disputes without further recourse to the court and find a way to rebuild their relationship,” he said.
William Simon Fattal v Elias Simon Fattal
Property trust and probate list (deputy master Hansen) 2 April 2022
