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Amy Winehouse’s father, Mitch Winehouse, has been ordered to pay almost £1 million (approx. €1.16m) to two of the singer’s friends after losing a High Court case over the sale of the singer’s belongings.
Mitch Winehouse must make payments to Amy’s former stylist Naomi Parry and her friend Catriona Gourlay within the next two weeks. He has also been ordered to cover their legal costs on an indemnity basis.
The order follows the dismissal of his claim against the two women in April.
Acting as the personal representative of his daughter’s estate, Mitch Winehouse claimed the two friends profited from selling items belonging to Amy at auctions in the US in 2021 and 2023. The 155 items included clothes, handbags, memorabilia and jewellery owned by the famous British singer. Her father argued they had no right to sell the items.
Parry and Gourlay maintained that Amy had either given them the items or that they had already belonged to them.
Deputy High Court Judge Sarah Clarke KC dismissed Winehouse’s claim in April, finding that neither woman had deliberately concealed the disputed items from him and that he had known about the intended sales before the auctions took place.
In a court judgment handed down yesterday, Judge Clarke said Mitch Winehouse had chosen to pursue an “inherently weak claim” both “aggressively and relentlessly”, while asserting that his allegations had significantly damaged the women’s “reputations, career prospects, financial security and health”.
She added that Winehouse had “deliberately turned this case into large-scale and expensive litigation” in an attempt to exert commercial pressure on the defendants.
Amy Winehouse died at the age of 27 from accidental alcohol poisoning. She was found in her Camden home in 2011.
Last week marked the 15th anniversary of her death, with her mother Janis leading tributes.
In an interview with The i, Janis reflected on the scale of the fame her daughter faced in her life. “She was a victim of her own success,” she said. “She didn’t want it, but it just followed her. And she’d be like, ‘Who, me?’”
Janis adeed: “She didn’t have confidence. Hence the alcohol. I think it’s the same with many, many addicts with alcohol. The alcohol takes away the pain. And that is a horrible thing with addiction.”
Addressing her ongoing grief, Janis said: “I’m just getting on with it because that’s what I do. I get on with life. I live it.”