Winehouse: Father made unsuccessful claim over auctioned items
The High Court has strongly criticised the solicitor to Amy Winehouse’s father for the “aggressive and unpleasant way” they pursued an unsuccessful claim on his behalf.
Sarah Clarke KC, sitting as a High Court judge, ordered Mitch Winehouse [1] to pay indemnity costs because of the way the claim was run and ordered him to make an interim payment on account of costs of nearly £965,000 to the two defendants, Naomi Parry and Catriona Gourlay.
She found that he tried to “intimidate” them into giving him what he wanted despite knowing they were “vulnerable, unsophisticated and impecunious”.
The claim concerned 141 items of property which Mr Winehouse alleged belonged to him as the personal representative of his daughter’s estate and which the defendants sold at auction in 2021 and 2023.
He was advised by London media law firm Russells, which he told the auctioneers were “the finest and most aggressive attorneys in London”.
Judge Clarke recounted: “Within days of the 2021 auction, he instructed his solicitors to bombard the defendants with aggressive letters making serious allegations of deceit and dishonesty and continued in a similar vein up to and including the trial.”
Mr Winehouse “deliberately turned this case into large-scale and expensive litigation, in circumstances calculated to exert commercial pressure on the defendants to settle on his terms”.
His budgeted costs were £161,000 but he spent £951,000. “The claimant knew that he had effectively limitless funds to pursue this litigation at any cost and deliberately exploited this advantage,” said the judge.
Ruling on costs, Judge Clarke explained: “The claimant lost on every material point of fact and law. His defeat was total and comprehensive.
“He and his witnesses were found to be unreliable and were disbelieved on oath. The defendants and their witnesses by contrast, were found to be reliable and truthful.”
She rejected Mr Winehouse’s submission that the trial was caused by the defendants’ refusal to accept his offers of settlement or mediation.
“A review of the pre-trial correspondence demonstrates the aggressive and unpleasant way in which the claimant’s solicitor pursued the defendants (which can only have been on the claimant’s instructions) and made offers of settlement which only ever amounted to requiring the defendants to concede his claim and make payments of money to him, whilst leaving him free to continue to publicly make serious accusations of dishonest, deceitful behaviour against them.
“At no point did the claimant ever properly consider the explanations provided by the defendants, nor the inherent weakness of his own case – on the contrary his response was to disbelieve the defendants and make additional, even more serious allegations against them shortly before trial.”
She added that Mr Winehouse gave no thought to the fact that the defendants had “consistently proved themselves to be devoted friends of Amy’s” and also given “unswerving support” to him and his family in the wake of her death in 2011.
Judge Clarke found that the defendants were “scared” of Mr Winehouse – “with good reason given his and his solicitors’ behaviour towards them” – but still responded constructively to requests to mediate.
A mediation with Ms Gourlay was “inevitably unsuccessful given that the claimant’s settlement parameters were totally unrealistic”, while Ms Parry “had to withdraw when the claimant’s solicitor made serious and totally unfounded accusations of impropriety against her and her solicitor which should never have been made but which have never been withdrawn (as they should have been)”.
The judge awarded indemnity costs because Mr Winehouse “unreasonably advanced, and aggressively pursued, a case which was speculative, weak, opportunistic and thin”.
She also praised the defendants’ solicitors, Patron Law and Lee & Thompson, for conducting “this difficult litigation properly and appropriately, despite coming under significant and unreasonable pressure from the claimant and his solicitors”.
Photo: By Rama – cropped version from, CC BY-SA 2.0 fr, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9542840