Roy Morgan wins legal fight after being locked out of Melbourne offices at weekend
One of Australia’s leading polling and audience measurement companies Roy Morgan was locked out of its offices over the weekend amidst a rental dispute with its landlord Impact Investment Group (IIG).
However a court has this morning found in favour of Roy Morgan with a judge ruling that it should be let back into the office and criticising the landlord for going ahead with the lock out without the permission of the court.
Over the weekend the company had claimed the lockout had been done illegally, issuing a statement claiming it has withheld $2.5m in rent because of a dispute over lift renovation work which would block “convenient access to our offices” for six months.
“IIG CEO, Chris Lock is well aware that we have secured our rent with a $2.5 million bank guarantee and a personal guarantee from Gary Morgan,” said Gary Morgan in a statement. “Their inflammatory, despicable, bully tactics are unconscionable.”
It is understood IIG placed security guards on the Collins Street building and disabled keycards for it held by Roy Morgan employees.
Roy Morgan’s Single Source data is used many media agencies for channel planning.
The Australian reports Justice Croft told IIG: “You should have come to this court if you were seeking expeditious relief of this kind.”
Comment has also been sought from IIG who had not responded at the time of publication. However it had issued a statement to The Australian over the weekend saying: “The landlord issued the tenant with a Notice to Remedy Breach of Lease however the tenant did not remedy the breach.
“The tenant has since continued to withhold rent and remain in occupancy of the property. The tenant’s defence was due to be filed on Wednesday 16th of December 2015, however, the Tenant has not filed a defence.
“In light of the Tenant’s non-payment of the rent for the months of October, November and December and failure to file a defence, the Landlord, in consultation with legal advisers elected to enforce its rights under the Lease and take action to re-enter the property.”
Asked about the claim that it had not filed a defence Gary Morgan today told Mumbrella: “We didn’t have to file until a certain date.”
Roy Morgan Research was ordered to pay more than $730,000 in back rent.
Justice Croft set the case for a five day trial beginning on February 2.
The dispute comes six months after it was revealed that Roy Morgan had lost $7.85m in the financial year ending June 2014.
According to AdNews the breakdown of the losses, total sales revenue across Roy Morgan fell from $58.7m to $54.1m in 2013 with revenue for key product the Single Source Survey falling from $33m in 2013 to $26.5m last year.
Asked if the company’s financial performance had improved since then Morgan said: “The company has turned around and we are going much better now.
“I don’t have that in front of me but we have filed that and we made a loss but we will be in profit this year.”
Nic Christensen
Nick they won their hearing and the court has ordered the landlords to let them back in.
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Both parties have displayed arrogance and obviously lack communication skills.
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Ridiculous that Morgan spam their entire database twice in 12 hours about this. for many it’s probably the first time in ages Roy Morgan research has been something people in an agency have thought about.
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Well, they have to pay the rent again, so they didn’t really ‘win’.
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Whilst everyone else has been either asleep at the wheel or had written Morgans off, they have quietly developed and launched a new digital audience measurement platform with a major Australian technology partner. Go to their website and check out Roy Morgan Audiences. It’s all been hush hush but the word is they already have publishers using it.
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Yeah, yeah, Morgan Official Spammer — fascinating stuff about the “hush hush” news that you can find on their website. How the hell is that relevant? So, back to the matter at hand.
It’s no surprise that the landlord wanted to fix the lifts. As anyone who has ever spent any time in that building knows, they break down a lot, and have been doing so for years. And Morgan knows that damn well. Need evidence? Read on:
“Mr Shirreff had been told by Mr Morgan to ”immediately” fix a ground-floor lift that was not working, despite his left hand already being in a cast. While trying to fix the lift, Mr Shirreff fell off a ladder and ”badly injured his right foot and hand”, Justice Ross Robson found.
Justice Robson, in his judgment, said the injury to Mr Shirreff’s foot was so bad that he has considered having it amputated and he has had psychiatric problems from the injury.”
http://www.theage.com.au/victo.....14rnz.html
So, it’s all quite appropriate that this should be the reason for the stoush.
Got anything to say about that, Morgan Spammer?
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