Joseph Mark Taylor v James Lee Taylor – A Quasi Partnership Dispute

Brother Uses Company to pay Himself and Support Own business £3,500,000

Joe and Jim Taylor grew up in the same house and then ran a family property company together, side by side, with nothing more formal than a chat over a cup of tea.

The story started long before either brother was born. Jamett Properties Limited was set up in 1962 by James Taylor senior, the boys’ father, to hold and let out commercial and residential property in east London and Essex. When he died in 1971, the company passed to his widow, Lilian. She had four children: Joe, Jim, and their sisters Janis and Shelley.

In 1985, Lilian gave each of her four children a stake in the company, keeping the same amount for herself. For years it stayed a modest family concern with a handful of let properties that were run informally with no real ambition to grow.

That changed in the early 2000s. Janis and Shelley, tired of the “family rowing” that came with joint ownership, sold their shares to Jim. Lilian later gifted her shares to Joe, which left Joe and Jim holding 40% and 60% respectively.

For more information, please read the full case on Joseph Mark Taylor v James Lee Taylor & Anor [2026] EWHC 106 (Ch)

Brothers in Business

From 2002 to the end of 2012, Joe and Jim ran the company together. There were no board meetings, no minutes and no formal structure at all. Instead, there were conversations in the office they shared, at Jim’s separate concrete business, Mixit.

They split the work along the lines of what each was good at. Jim handled the money and the banking. Joe, who is dyslexic, and said this shaped how the pair divided their roles, dealt with the physical side like building staircases, fixing up properties and calming down difficult tenants. Between them, the company grew from four let properties to around twenty, funded by mortgages and by loans from Mixit.

The brothers didn’t take either salary or dividends from the company, ploughing everything back into it for growth. However, both brothers drew salaries from Mixit instead.

The Fall-Out

The relationship collapsed in early 2013. Joe, who had also been employed by Mixit, was dismissed from that job following a health and safety dispute. He later won an unfair dismissal claim against the company. Jim decided, in his own words, that “we couldn’t work together on the board” anymore.

There was a shouting match in the office and it was the last time Joe ever set foot in the building.

Weeks later, Jim sent Joe a letter proposing a meeting to remove him as a company director. Joe wrote back, angrily, pointing out that this was “a private family company” where they were “all their father’s children,” and urging Jim to look at his own conduct. No meeting notice was ever produced, no minutes were ever taken but Companies House still ended up with a record, filed two years late, in 2015, showing that Joe had resigned as a director in April 2013.

From that point on, Joe had almost nothing to do with the business he had helped build. He received the company’s annual accounts, when they were filed but received little else.

Where the Money Went

While Joe was locked out, the company kept growing on paper and kept sending money to Mixit.

In 2016, Jim moved the company’s banking from NatWest to Lloyds, taking out a £4m loan. Part of that loan was used to clear the company’s long-standing, interest-free debt to Mixit, a debt Mixit had agreed never to call in, and replace it with a commercial loan at 2.6% over base rate. In practice, this swapped a free ride for the company into an expensive new liability, for no obvious benefit except tidying up Jim’s books.

In 2020, Jim proposed a “rights issue” that would have required Joe to stump up more capital or see his stake diluted. Joe hired lawyers to apply for an injunction to block it. Years later, in the witness box, Jim admitted what Joe had always suspected that the real purpose of the rights issue had been to dilute Joe’s shareholding below 25%, because his 40% stake was blocking Jim’s ability to raise finance without his consent.

In 2022, Jim took out an even bigger loan of £5.5m from NatWest and again sent a large chunk of it, nearly £1.7m, straight to Mixit. This time it wasn’t even used to clear a debt. It was simply lent, interest-free and unsecured, to keep Mixit afloat.

It didn’t work. Mixit collapsed into insolvent administration in May 2024, owing creditors more than £10.6m. According to the company’s own ledgers, Mixit owed Jamett Properties over £3.5m at that point.

Money moved the other way too. Jim borrowed hundreds of thousands of pounds from the company for himself over the years, through his director’s loan account, then periodically wrote the debt off by shifting it onto Mixit’s books instead. That meant it vanished from the figures Joe could see in the statutory accounts, and once Mixit went bust, it became effectively uncollectable.

There was also a pension fund connected to Mixit, which had lent the company money it apparently didn’t need, while charging it interest and which the company ended up collecting rent for, unpaid, with the debt still climbing.

The Lawsuit

Joe issued court proceedings against Jim in June 2024, under section 994 of the Companies Act 2006. He argued that he and Jim had built the company as equal partners in all but name, that he had been wrongly frozen out, and that Jim had been quietly using the company’s money to prop up his own separate business empire.

The case ground on for a year and a half with disclosure disputes, amended pleadings, and a failed mediation. Then, three weeks before the trial was due to start, Jim sacked his solicitors and barrister.

He told the court, in writing, that he could no longer afford to pay them. He said he needed an adjournment to find cheaper lawyers. Under questioning at the trial itself, he admitted this wasn’t true at all as his old solicitors were still holding money to cover the trial. He simply didn’t want to spend it. The judge concluded that Jim had “told a convenient untruth” in an effort to gain leverage over his brother, only for the excuse to be dropped once it became clear it wouldn’t work. Jim ended up representing himself at trial, cross-examining his own sisters.

Five days of evidence followed at the Rolls Building in London in December 2025, in front of Nicola Rushton KC. Joe gave evidence, alongside his sisters Janis and Shelley. Jim gave evidence too, along with his bookkeeper, his accountant, and a family friend who had once tried, unsuccessfully, to broker peace between the brothers.

What the Judge Found

Handing down judgment on 29 January 2026, the judge found overwhelmingly for Joe.

She ruled that from 2002 to the end of 2012, the company had been run as a genuine “quasi-partnership” between the brothers. Both brothers had been actively involved in running the business according to their respective skills, on the basis of mutual trust.

She found Joe had never been validly removed as a director, had been wrongly excluded from the company since 2013, and that Jim had run Jamett Properties to benefit himself and his other businesses (especially Mixit) at the company’s expense. Most of Joe’s unfair prejudice claims succeeded, with only a few minor allegations rejected.

The question of the cost to Jim was left for a later hearing.