A legal ruling on whether Kate Bleasdale, founder of healthcare recruiter Healthcare Locums (HCL), should be made bankrupt edged a step closer following proceedings in the High Court in London yesterday.

Former business associate Debbie Forster is seeking to make Bleasdale and her businessman husband John Cariss bankrupt to enforce judgement of a £3.3m court order.

The original figure is made up of £300k in damages awarded to Forster after Bleasdale ousted her from Stayput Solutions, a company Forster set up, and £3m in legal costs. With interest the actual figure is estimated to be in the region of £4m. 

Yesterday’s hearing followed previous proceedings in March in which a counter claim by Bleasdale was struck out. As Recruiter reported in January, Bleasdale had claimed Forster’s actions led to Bleasdale’s ski lodge in Colorado being sold for US$8.5m (£5.26m) less than it was worth “by creating an atmosphere that led to a distressed sale”. 

In December 2014, High Court bailiffs raided a Kingston-upon-Thames property owned by Bleasdale and Cariss as Forster sought to recover the money she claims Bleasdale owes her.

In 2012 Bleasdale made an unsuccessful £12m claim for unfair dismissal and sex discrimination against HCL, which she founded, following her 2011 dismissal. 

Bleasdale’s legal battle with Forster goes back to 2009. 

In court yesterday, Bleasdale’s counsel Alun Jenkins argued it would be “inequitable to strike out Bleasdale’s counter claim” because the loss resulting from Forster’s alleged actions for which they are seeking damages is to a US company, Cedar Investments, in which Bleasdale and Cariss are shareholders, rather than a loss to the two individuals themselves. Cedar owned the Colorado ski lodge that had to be sold.

“Ms Forster should not be allowed to bankrupt them on the back of it,” said Jenkins.

Jenkins also told the court that the beneficiary of the April 2013 court [Tomlin] order obliging Bleasdale to pay the £3.3m was not in fact Forster, but Reynolds Porter Chamberlain (RPC), a firm of solicitors who had represented Forster until 2012.

In response, Forster’s counsel Paul Marshall told the court that Forster “is plainly the beneficiary of the order, which can only be enforced in the hands of the judgement creditor [Ms Forster] because RPC is not party to the order”. He told the court there was “absolutely nothing new factually about [the other side’s] arguments”. “It is tantamount to an abuse of process,” he said. 

After hearing legal argument, registrar Briggs said he would reserve judgement, coming to a decision as soon as possible, although he said he couldn’t say when that would be. 

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