My brother runs an event business. He stores two of his clients property (screens, furniture, lighting etc) at a company he uses to ship and provide logistical project support etc.
He is currently in dispute with this logistics company over poor performance and lack of delivery on one of his recent projects for the first client. The service he received was so shockingly bad that my brother is refusing to pay for a portion of the final invoice. Having looked through the details of the case this seems fair enough to me, I mean you don’t pay for stuff that doesn’t get delivered right?
Meanwhile the storage company is refusing to release the property of my brothers second client (unrelated to the first client) until he pays in full for the outstanding invoice relating to the first clients project? My brother doesn’t own the property, it belongs to my brothers second client who is currently unaware of the situation. My brother is contracted to store and look after the property and obviously my brother doesn’t want to drag his clients into this.
So what can he do to recover his clients property from the storage companies premises? If they are refusing to hand it over is this technically theft? Is this a police matter or should he be going to see a solicitor? Any lawyers in the house?