Judge awards barrister stg£400,000 in property after break-up with fiancé
Kerry Cox launched the British High Court claim against Lawrence Jones who she claimed was her fiancé until she was forced to break off the engagement because of his drunken violence.
Ms Cox said during the time she was with Mr Jones, she was promised a half-share of a mill they were converting in Essex and full ownership of a flat in Islington, north London, above her own home in Thornhill Bridge Wharf.
Mr Justice Mann, who said in his judgment yesterday that his task had been made more difficult because of the “great bitterness” of the break-up, awarded her the stg£200,000 London flat and a 25% share in the mill worth stg£200,000.
He threw out Mr Jones’s claim for the return of an engagement ring valued at stg£20,000 and Ms Cox’s claim for the return of a Fiat car and furniture.
Ms Cox, 39, had told Mr Justice Mann that she moved in with Mr Jones at his flat in Stone Buildings, Lincoln’s Inn, after they became engaged in early 1998.
She said their relationship came to an end in May 2001 because of his “alcohol-fuelled aggression and violence”. Both properties in dispute are in the name of Mr Jones, who said he was only ever engaged to Ms Cox for a few weeks and said she had to move out of his flat partly because of the “uncontrollable and unacceptable behaviour” of her alsatian dog, Bootsy.
He agreed the relationship, which continued after the engagement ended, was “tempestuous and topsy-turvy” but he denied he was an aggressive drunk.
Mr Jones said in a witness statement that he took away her engagement ring in April 1998 because she was seeing other men and he had found her engaged in “blatantly sexual behaviour” with a leading member of the Bar outside Stone Buildings.
He also accused her of making “outrageous advances” to members of the Australian cricket team while they were being entertained by the governor general of Grenada during a tour of the West Indies.
Ms Cox told the judge that Mr Jones had asked her if she had wanted a diamond ring when they were staying at the Mandarin Hotel in Hong Kong.
She said she eventually settled on a ring, which was later valued at nearly stg£20,000, after a holiday in the Solomon Islands.
Thomas Ashe QC, representing Mr Jones, asked whether she remembered agreeing with his client that if the engagement was broken off, she would return the ring.
She replied: “Absolutely not. Lawrence would never have said that. It was not in his nature.’
Legal argument over who pays how much of the estimated stg£300,000 costs of the case was adjourned.
