Sitting tenant loses home battle

A city banker and his wife have won a legal battle to remove a sitting tenant from their £1.75 million house.

John Wilson and his wife Michelle bought the run-down three-storey Edwardian detached house in Wimbledon four years ago. But Paul Coleman, a tenant for 29 years, refused to move out. After a hearing which contained allegations of bugging, a judge has ordered him to leave in a month's time. He now faces a legal bill for £35,000. Kingston Crown Court heard Dr Wilson, a father of four, wanted to convert the property into one home.

There were other tenants at the time: one died, another left while a third took up the Wilsons' offer of another flat at the same rent.

But Mr Coleman rejected two properties - one was 50 per cent bigger - claiming they were not suitable. A keen astronomer, he said they were too small for his telescopes.

The hearing was marked by clashes between the Wilsons' barrister Stuart Hornett and Mr Coleman which often bordered on the bizarre. It emerged that Mr Coleman sent press cuttings to Dr Wilson's employers, investment bank Lehman Brothers, to cause him embarrassment.

Mr Hornett accused the tenant of being obstructive. He told him: "You have a pattern of behaviour that is implacably opposed to everything my clients have offered you, and you are out to make as much mischief as possible."

Defending himself against allegations that he had been obstructive to landlords, Mr Coleman claimed to have helped police foil an attempt by the gardener of a previous owner to swindle her estate out of £1million.

Both sides accused the other of bugging conversations. Mr Coleman produced the transcript of a conversation between Mrs Wilson and her solicitor.

He claimed he picked this up using an ordinary tape recorder but was accused by Mr Hornett of having planted a bugging device, a charge he did not deny.

In turn Mr Coleman claimed he had seen Mrs Wilson in an empty flat above his with a stranger and that he found boxes designed to hold surveillance equipment.

Summing up, Judge Adele Williams described Mr Coleman's conduct as "very poor" and that he "clearly intended to make mischief " by trying to draw Mr Wilson's employers into the case.