Two renowned Birmingham businessmen who were once “best friends” fell out in dramatic fashion at a dinner party arranged to discuss the sale of the lap dancing club they ran together.

Laurence Reddy and Allan Sartori have been battling it out in the High Court over a prized piece of pavement immediately outside the Rocket Club on Broad Street.

The lucrative slice of land houses an outdoor terrace with seating and a smoking shelter and brings in rental income of almost £1,200 each week from a fast food trailer based there.

Now the two former business partners must wait for a judge’s decision as to who is the rightful owner.

Mr Sartori successfully claimed ownership of the land from the Land Registry in 2009 but Rocket Club owners Balevents Ltd, which is owned by Mr Reddy’s family, claim the prized piece of pavement rightfully belongs to the club rather than its former general manager.

Mr Sartori’s claim to the land is based on the fact he says his father Bernard sold sandwiches there from a kiosk as far back as the 1970s.

He claimed he carried on the business from the 1980s, running it in tandem with the Rep Cafe Bar, also on Broad Street.

The legal battle follows a falling out between Mr Sartori and Mr Reddy who were involved in the club together until the company which ran it under licence, Broad Street Entertainments, was wound up last year.

Mr Sartori bowed out of the business while Mr Reddy continued running the club.

The court was told of an arrangement between the two businessmen for Mr Sartori to buy the club from Mr Reddy, who had come in as an investor when the fledgling club was struggling.

William Hansen, for Mr Sartori, referred to a meeting between the two men in the Green Man pub in Middleton where he said there was an agreement Mr Reddy would sell the club to Mr Sartori for £400,000, something which the men ‘‘shook hands on’’.

Mr Reddy said: “I said ‘Allan, you are going to make much more money working with me than alone’.

‘‘I may well have said ‘we will see what we can do’. For months before we had been talking about ‘his family business’ and it was moving that way. In principle I accepted his offer of £400,000 – to be discussed subsequently.”

In 2009 members of the Sartori and Reddy families met for a dinner party at the Sartori family home in Sutton Coldfield where the atmosphere soured after concerns were raised about the club’s financial situation.

Mr Sartori’s daughter Joanne said: “We wanted the sale of the club to go through by September and Laurence Reddy assured us it would. He brought around a discussion document and we all sat down to dinner.

“My mother said ‘where has all the money gone in the club’ and Laurence Reddy got very aggressive, screamed obscenities in my mother’s face, grabbed his wife – who was quite embarrassed – and left.

Mr Sartori’s wife Lynne added: “The purchase agreement document said there wasn’t any money in the club, which was strange as the business was a good business.

‘‘I asked the question where had the money gone and he (Mr Reddy) was very abusive.”

Mr Sartori told how he was “pushed out” of the business and said: “I wanted it to return to my family business. That was always the plan right up until we fell out and he fell against me.

“He pushed me out of the business with nothing – not even a week’s holiday pay. I am not the millionaire – I am a little man who lives in a terraced house in Bearwood.

“Mr Reddy made a calculated business decision and did very well out of it. He has made millions of pounds out of that club.

“This whole business was run on the back of a cigarette packet and it is still run like that today.

‘‘We never had any board meetings, never sat down and never took minutes. But it was an incredibly profitable business.

“Laurence Reddy was my best friend – I had no reason to distrust him. We would have coffee together, have lunch together and discuss family issues.”

Evidence was also given relating to a sailing holiday in Italy where it was alleged a discussion took place relating to Mr Sartori’s claim to the land, which Mr Reddy allegedly accepted was his partner’s “pension”.

Paul Fendick, a businessmen present at the time who described himself as a friend of both men, said: “Allan said he was going to put the land in his name because of the length of time he had been there and it was during that conversation it came up it would be his pension.

"That is when Laurence Reddy said at the end of the day it would be his pension.”

In his summing up Mr Hansen said: “The only thing that has changed is that the parties have fallen out and Laurence Reddy has embarked upon a vindictive piece of litigation, the full object of which is to ruin an old friend.”

But Anthony Verduyn, for Reddy, said: “This is an important asset by anybody’s standards.

“To try to reduce it down to the level of bickering between two men is, in my submission, plainly wrong.”

Judge Mr Justice Kitchin said he wanted to reserve his judgment in the case to look back at the evidence.