Bono finds what he’s looking for as stylist loses appeal

FORMER U2 stylist Lola Cashman yesterday lost her High Court appeal against a decision ordering her to return items, including Bono’s stetson, to the band.

Ms Cashman now has to return Bono’s stetson, trousers, silver earrings and green sweatshirt she had claimed were given as gifts to her during the Joshua Tree tour.

Mr Justice Michael Peart said he could not be satisfied that the account given by Ms Cashman was correct.

“The reason for that is that there are many instances where her evidence lacks credibility, plausibility or probability,” the judge said.

The instances he said relate to matters peripheral to the main issues.

However, the judge said if he found her evidence unbelievable in those respects, “there is little reason why I should give more credence to her evidence in relation to largely uncorroborated and unsupported assertions on the more central issues.”

Mr Justice Peart said he did not believe Lola Cashman was deliberately being untruthful.

“I believe that for the most part she has convinced herself to the point of honest belief that these goods were given to her and has developed, sometimes inconsistently a story of recollection in relation to same,” the judge stated.

Members of the rock band or Lola Cashman were not in court for the judgement.

Ms Cashman had taken her case to the High Court after the President of the Circuit Court told her to hand back Bono’s hat and the other items.

Bono told the High Court last month the band were now looking for those key items including a trousers, mugs, a sweatshirt and a photocopy of a handwritten list of U2 songs along with the return of any other property and photographs.

In the High Court, Mr Justice Peart said yesterday he was satisfied the items remain the property of U2 and he affirmed the order made by the Circuit Court.

Mr Justice Peart said for his part the case has much to do with the credibility of witnesses since the court was dealing with events dating back about 19 years. The principal actors in the case, he said were Bono and Ms Cashman.

“It is more a question that while Ms Cashman displays a clear recollection of some matters and none about others, Bono has little of no recollection of things having happened in the way she recollects and must assume therefore that it did not happen that way, as otherwise he would remember it,” the judge said.

The onus he said in a case such as this, is really on Ms Cashman to satisfy the court that ownership of the goods passed completely to her by the circumstances in which says the goods came in to her possession.

U2 he said have stated they never gave the goods to Ms Cashman and she says that they did. She, the judge said, had to displace U2’s assertion that the band own the goods.

The courts task, he said was not to establish the truth but to determine as best it can in the face of honestly given yet conflicting evidence what happened or did not happen in relation to the disputed items All U2 could do he said is assert the unlikelihood that it could have happened because of the nature of the items in questions which were important to their stage image and items needed for ongoing filming at the end of the tour.

Bono he said had no recollection of giving these items to Ms Cashman.

The judge added: “But I could not accept simply from the fact that Bono has no recollection of something happening that it must have therefore happened in the manner described by Ms Cashman.”

The judge stressed he was not satisfied there is any motive on U2’s part which results from ill will or malice.

“Albeit that much of Bono’s evidence concerns his lack of recollection rather than actual recollection, I have no reason to cast doubt on his credibility on the basis of motive or malice,” Mr Justice Peart said.

Mr Justice Peart also referred to Lola Cashman’s book on U2 “Inside the Zoo-U2” in which she claimed U2 manager Paul McGuinness asked her to stay on after the Joshua Tree tour and work solely for the band. Mr McGuinness denied that any retainer was offered.

“I have no reason not to believe him, whereas I have several reasons for not taking at face value what Ms Cashman says, the judge said.