The Independent

Missing millions caused fall of my House of Usher, claims man with hotdog stand

By Robert Verkaik, Legal Affairs Correspondent

04 April 2001

From Stuart Usher's hotdog stand on the A68 near the Scottish border, he has a clear view of his family's once-vast estates where he spent his childhood. He always expected that one day he would return to his ancestral seat near Jedburgh and claim his inheritance at the House of Usher.

But when the family finally lost control of its fortunes in 1994 he fell spectacularly from riches to rags. Last week 60-year-old Mr Usher began his legal fight to reclaim his lost wealth, which he says includes a hotel once owned by Sir Richard Branson.

In what is believed to be the biggest lawsuit in Scottish legal history Mr Usher has issued a £365m summons against the law firm that managed the family trust. He claims the Edinburgh solicitors Brodies were negligent by failing in their duty of care to the beneficiaries of the trusts.

Mr Usher now sells hotdogs to passing motorists who stop to admire the views from the Cheviot Hills after crossing the border. In recent years he has also worked as barman and taxi driver. Home is no longer a grand country estate but a three-bedroom "hovel" just a few miles from his former ancestral home. "I don't even own the hotdog stand," Mr Usher said yesterday. "It belongs to a woman I work for."

At the turn of the century, the Ushers were among Scotland's richest families, with houses set in thousands of prime acres in Perthshire, Lothian and the Borders. Stuart Usher fondly remembers his childhood and as a young man living with his father next to the main house on the Wells Estate near Jedburgh.

"I was free to roam the 7,000 acres and used to walk for miles. I also loved to hunt and I was a fanatical fisherman. Even later when I grew up I was put in charge of the cows. I always lived a very comfortable and privileged life."

But in 1962 his uncle, Sir Stuart Usher, the head of the family, died and the estate was "dissolved" because his two sons had Down's syndrome and lacked capacity to manage the estate. Sir Robert Usher, the younger of the two brothers, died in 1994 and the remnants of the House of Usher were dispersed among the family. In 1995, Stuart Usher returned from South Africa, where he had set up a builders' manufacturing business, to claim his share. But he said he discovered that over the years the estates had been run down and, he says, "mismanaged".

Mackenzie and Black, incorporated in the Seventies into Brodies, were appointed trustees of the Usher trusts in 1911. Mr Usher claims that between 1911 and 1933, about £1.2m in cash, property and securities was paid into the trust.

The summons, issued on Mr Usher's behalf, says the trust was generating an income of £70,000 a year by 1928. It says the present value of identified trust assets would be £110m, capable of producing an income of £8m a year. But, says the summons, between 1911 and 1998, family members received only £3m.

Mr Usher is using the Human Rights Act 1998 to argue that Brodies owed a duty of care to the beneficiaries. He is being backed by two Scottish businessmen in whose names he has assigned the legal action. Yesterday a spokesman for Brodies denounced the claims as "utter rubbish". He said they were part of a fantasy Mr Usher had no hope of fulfilling. "Not one of his complaints against the firm [to the Law Society and Ombudsman] have been sustained," he added.

The Usher family was particularly popular in Edinburgh in the first half of the 20th century after Sir Robert Usher, known as the Whisky King, built a warehouse in the city to hold 25 million bottles of his liquor. When he died in 1933, he left £10,000 to Edinburgh Royal Infirmary and farms and estates in West Lothian and the Borders. The family also gave Edinburgh the Usher Hall.

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