Mooseheads has lost a legal battle with Burgmann College students after a dispute about sponsorship, an envelope stuffed with $7000 in cash and a mystery man.
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Burgmann Residents Association, which represents students from the ANU's Burgmann College, took Mooseheads to the ACT Civil and Administrative Tribunal after it failed to pay $8800 in sponsorship money in 2011.
The two groups had agreed to the sponsorship deal - trading cash, loyalty cards, and kegs for Mooseheads advertising - in February 2011.
But the deal soured later that year, when the Burgmann Residents Association asked the club where $7000 of the money was in an email in August.
Mooseheads director Nicole Miladinovic replied:
"That is bazarr [sic] as a cash payment was picked up by one of your committee the week of your after party and ball...," she wrote.
Ms Miladinovic claimed that a man had called her in late May, asking that the sponsorship money be paid in cash to be collected from Mooseheads.
She said she put $7000 cash - which was part of the agreed sponsorship - in an envelope, and gave it to bar staff, telling them to alert her when someone from Burgmann College arrived.
A man wearing a Burgmann rugby jumper walked into the pub, and he was given the money.
The man stayed in the bar area for five minutes and then walked out.
Ms Miladinovic said he did not give a name, that she never established his identity, and that she did not ask for a receipt for the cash.
The CCTV footage of the unidentified man had not been kept, she told the tribunal.
She said she had assumed he was a representative of the association because he knew to ask for her by name, knew details of the Burgmann College ball, and knew of the substance of the sponsorship agreement.
But the association told the tribunal that no one from its committee, or representing the committee, ever attended Mooseheads to pick up the cash.
They said they never received the $7000, and said the sponsorship agreement had been breached.
In an email reply to Mooseheads in August, association vice-president Murray Robertson said:
"Did you know the person's name? Again we have not receive any payment to this year and I'm confused how a stranger somehow managed to get 7000 dollars," Mr Robertson wrote.
"I can recheck our accounts but at this stage we don't have that 7000 dollars and unless you can confirm that the person who picked up that money was from Burgmann we will still be asking for our sponsorship payment," he wrote.
The tribunal ordered Mooseheads to pay the $8800, plus other fees worth $139.
