Winehouse v Parry & Anor [2026] EWHC 1970 (KB) 

If you criticise the other side for unreasonably refusing to engage in mediation, make sure you’re not being unreasonable yourself!

Mitch Winehouse, as administrator of his late daughter Amy Winehouse’s estate, sued her friends Naomi Parry and Catriona Gourlay over items they had sold at auctions. He said they shouldn’t have taken the items and were in breach of fiduciary duty.

After a five day High Court trial, he lost, with the judge rejecting his evidence as unreliable. The judge found the items belonged to, or were gifted to, the defendants during Amy’s lifetime.

In respect of costs, Winehouse argued the defendants had “unreasonably ignored or deferred repeated requests… to mediate until a very late stage,” and that if they had “genuinely sought early, proportionate resolution, they would have engaged candidly.”
 
The judge disagreed, finding “the likelihood of any mediation succeeding was therefore nil,” because Winehouse “never had any intention to settle the case on any terms other than a capitulation by the defendants and payment of money,” while the defendants were entitled “to fight to restore their reputations,” which no financial settlement alone could achieve. The judge also found that the defendants “were both scared of him – with good reason given his and his solicitors’ behaviour.” The judgment is a useful reminder that there is no automatic costs penalty simply because mediation does not take place or does not succeed.
 
Winehouse was ordered to pay the Defendants’ costs on the indemnity basis, because he had “deliberately turned this case into large scale and expensive litigation… calculated to exert commercial pressure on the defendants to settle on his terms,” and that he “unreasonably advanced, and aggressively pursued, a case which was speculative, weak, opportunistic and thin.”

The court pointed to a cumulative pattern extending through the whole case: late dishonesty allegations that were ultimately rejected, unsubstantiated accusations against the defendants and their lawyers, public statements adding reputational pressure, exploitation of the financial disparity between the parties, and a trial that overran as a result. Taken together, the judge concluded this fell “outside the ordinary and reasonable conduct of proceedings,” to a high degree.
 
The lesson: if you’re going to criticise the other side for not engaging in mediation, you’d better be able to show you were reasonable and sensible yourself, in how you conducted the litigation, how you requested mediation, and how you behaved once you got there

Winehouse v Parry & Anor [2026] EWHC 1970 (KB) 

Judgment: https://lnkd.in/eSK2biPZ