Can an ex business partner do this?

I was in a business partnership with a guy for a good few years and we went our seperate ways last year. It was not amicable and we are only in contact through letters. Here is my query:

There was some surplus equipment which he removed from a site. When I questioned him about this he said that it is in storage & I will have to pay the storage cost to get it back. He never consulted me about this or about the cost of same and it just so happens his brother owns a storage company.

I know he used this in another job and that some of it he has in his own house. I have a storage facility of my own which we could have used

Can he make this decision about storage on equipment we both owned without consulting me.

Thanks for the reply

Was the equipment owned by your business or personally? What was the structure of the business - limited company, or partnership or what? What kind of money is he looking for for the storage fee, relative to the value of the equipment?

The equipment was owned by the business. The business was a partnership and he has not mentioned a figure yet just informed me by letter that the equipment was in storage when I enquired about same

I'm still a bit confused. Is the partnership still in place or not? If it got closed off, then surely you would have reached some agreement about disposal of assets of the partnership.

Unless there was some agreement like this, then the equipment is still owned by the business. If you want the equipment, you should be making an offer to buy it from the business. Maybe as a practical suggestion, you could negotiate a price with him to wrap up this issue. You should also make sure the business is formally closed down, so there can be no further issues about assets or liabilities.

Thank you for your reply. The partnership has not formally been disolved so the equipment is still owned by the business. I was trying to establish if he could make this decision without consulting me on price etc. Should he not consulted me?

Was there anything in the partnership agreement about roles, responsibilities, decision making etc? Who had authority to incur costs to the business?

I'd have thought that the solution to this does not lie in the legal rights and entitlements - look for a practical solution.

Good advice from Complainer.