The timing could hardly be more inappropriate. As the LTA prepares to announce the dramatis personae to lead the sport to a bountiful future, so the association is having to prepare itself for a court case that could have far-reaching repercussions for its reputation as a governing body.
On December 11, the High Court in London will begin to hear a case that pits the LTA and Queen’s Club Limited against the members of the club over its proposed sale by the LTA to the members for £45 million. Indeed, the bedrock of the members’ case is whether the LTA is legally free to sell the club on a commercial basis and to retain the profits.
Behind the scenes, the whole affair — which has its origins in a 53-year-old document — once threw member against member, with elements of Le Carré in its tales of empty archive folders, mysterious fires in storerooms and accusations of dirty tricks. As time has passed, however, the members have grown increasingly united against what the overwhelming majority regard as a cause worth fighting for.
Bearing that in mind, as the cast list of LTA appointees grows — it is certain that Carl Maes, the Belgian, will become head of women’s tennis today with a role for Nigel Sears, the Briton, in professional development — and their wages are costed, what should happen if the LTA loses the case and is left with a paltry percentage of the money it had been counting on from the sale? For this is the era of the big British tennis cheque, not belt-tightening.
The Queen’s Club members, having formed a litigation committee, have accumulated enough money to fund their case — £300 per senior member was suggested, but a message sent to each one said that they should give only what they could afford. Unless an out-of-court settlement is forthcoming, battle will be joined on Monday week.
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The affair dates back to the acquisition of the club, in West London, by the LTA in 1953, thanks to an indefinite interest-free loan of £50,000 from the All England Club, “thus to preserve for the game in perpetuity such exceptional facilities”.
The Members’ Litigation Committee has stated: “Our view is that the records show quite conclusively that the LTA were never intended to profit from the club as a commercial proprietor. The club was established on a non-profit-making basis, to be held by the LTA as a trustee or custodian to protect the club’s unique facilities for sport for the benefit of future generations.
“The intention was that the club would continue to be run by the members for the members, and on the basis that only the members could change the rules. In fact, this is the way the club operated for most of the last century. A change of regime only became possible when the events of 1953 passed out of living memory. A host of witness statements substantiate the view that this version of events is correct.”
One of those, from Patrick Ground, QC, goes to the heart of the members’ case. “It is probable that the members of the club who were negotiating the new arrangements with the LTA in 1953 knew directly or indirectly that the LTA had promised the All England Club as a condition of its loan to preserve the unique facilities of the club in perpetuity,” he says. “It was certainly my understanding, and I believe the understanding of other members who took some interest in the legal structure of the club, that the LTA would not seek to sell its interest in the club or seek to make a profit out of it.”
It was at the Queen’s annual meeting in 2001 when it was first discovered that the LTA was preparing to put the club up for sale, seen at the time as a means of helping to fund the cost (about £40 million) of the new National Tennis Centre in Roehampton, southwest London, which opens in February. The whispers of disquiet at that initial announcement have become a surge of anger and resentment.
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A total of 37 witness statements for the members’ case will be presented, to six from the LTA, including one each from Stuart Smith, the president, and John Crowther, the former chief executive, dismissed in April but asked to stay on to oversee the LTA’s case.
The members state: “We believe it is unconscionable for the LTA to seek to appropriate to itself funds invested by members in a club which the LTA caused or permitted members to think of as a members’ club and of which the LTA was ostensibly a mere caretaker, custodian or steward.” And so the ball will soon be in a rather different court.
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