Pensioner ‘attacked’ daughter-in-law during family row over £50m caravan empire, court hears

A 76-year-old pensioner ‘attacked’ her multimillionaire son’s wife with an office chair during an ‘increasingly bitter’ £50m family fight over a caravan park empire, a court has heard.

Michael Loveridge and his parents are wrestling for control of a ‘solvent, highly profitable and cash-rich’ chain of caravan parks and a caravan sales business based in Bewdley, Worcestershire, and worth millions.

A bitter schism has grown between Michael, 50, and his mother Ivy and 78-year-old father Alldey in the power struggle over the empire.

Relations have become so toxic within the wealthy Loveridge family that tycoon Michael tried to get his 76-year-old mother Ivy imprisoned claiming she breached high court injunctions which he argued prevented her from ‘interfering’ with the family business.

In the latest development, the family are arguing over who should pay Ivy’s legal fees caused by her son’s attempts to have her imprisoned last July which he later dropped.

Ivy’s lawyers say that as claims that she breached injunctions were brought and then abandoned by Michael, he should pick up the £23,000 bill for her fees.

Meanwhile, Michael’s legal team say that because his mother ‘attacked’ his wife during a dispute – a claim Ivy contests – he should not be ordered to pay Ivy’s legal fees.

Michael, 51, says he has spent the last 20 years building the business – based in Worcestershire and now worth, he says, up to £50 million – from ‘modest’ beginnings, doing all the ‘important’ work in growing the family fortunes.

But his mother Ivy and father Alldey insist they are the driving force behind the family empire, having set it up in 1973 when Michael was still just a toddler.

Michael and his parents have faced off in a series of court battles since Michael obtained interim High Court injunctions granting him control of the three family business partnerships and five family companies in April and May last year.

Ivy and Alldey then succeeded in an Appeal Court fight to get the orders overturned, as Michael launched a bid to get his mother committed to prison for previous breaches of the injunctions which banned her and his father from ‘interfering’ with the businesses.

He eventually dropped the committal proceedings, but left his mother with a £23,000 lawyers’ bill for defending herself from his efforts to jail her.

She is now asking top judges in the Appeal Court to overturn the order that she should pay her own lawyers’ bill, insisting that her son should stump up the cash because it was he who had started, and dropped, the case.

But Michael is insisting she should pay, claiming he was right to try to jail her after a ‘serious incident’ involving his wife being ‘attacked’ and pushed out of an office by his mother using a chair.

The Appeal Court heard that the Loveridge family run their empire of park home sites based in Worcestershire, including the Riverside Caravan Park, in Bewdley, near Kidderminster, where Ivy and Alldey live.

Michael is a director of several of the family companies involved in the fight, which his barrister Mark Anderson QC told the court have ‘a capital asset value of around £40-£50 million’.

The family war for control of the businesses flared up after his parents accused Michael of having ‘misappropriated’ £1.25m from one of the family companies and used it to buy another caravan park for himself, Lance Ashworth QC, for Ivy and Alldey, said.

They subsequently tried to get him removed as a director of that company and the fight hit Birmingham High Court last year when Judge Patrick McCahill QC made the interim orders granting Michael day to day control of the empire.

That included overseeing the winding up of two of the business partnerships – and in the process trying to boot his parents out of their home, said Mr Ashworth.

Michael’s bid to get his mother jailed arose out of the partnership dispute, with him claiming she was guilty of contempt of court for 18 breaches of the interim partnership injunction.

His mother denied any wrongdoing and he eventually dropped his bid to jail her after both the interim injunctions were overturned by the Appeal Court.

Arguing that Michael should have been forced to pay his mother’s court costs of the committal proceedings rather than her, Mr Ashworth said: ‘This decision was extraordinary, contrary to principle and wrong.

‘In circumstances where Michael unilaterally decided to withdraw the committal application, Ivy was the clear and obvious winner.’

But Mr Anderson, for Michael, insisted the decision not to order him to pay his mother’s costs was right.

In his committal bid, Michael had claimed his wife was ‘physically assaulted…by Ivy shoving her out with a chair’ during a meeting at a family office.

Ivy’s lawyers admitted a row had taken place which Michael ‘characterised as an attack’ involving Ivy having ‘used a raised voice’ and ‘steered’ Michael and his wife ‘out of the office with (a) chair.’

In a statement, her lawyers admitted that Ivy had ‘pushed Michael’s wife towards the door with a roll chair and is regretful if the chair banged Michael’s wife’s ankles in the process.

‘Ivy herself fell over as a result and suffered lacerations to her knee,’ her lawyers’ statement says, but adding: ‘To characterise this as an attack is not a dispassionate fair or even-handed presentation of matters.’

Mr Anderson said that in light of the incident, Michael should not be made to pay for his mother’s lawyers’ fees in relation to the committal bid.

‘It was an extremely serious incident…and left Michael and his advisors in no doubts that Ivy did not seek to comply with the court orders,’ he told the court.

Michael is also bringing a petition under the Companies Act, claiming his parents have caused ‘unfair prejudice’ to him as a minority shareholder in some of the family companies by seeking to recall over £7m worth of loans made within the family business network.

He claims the attempt to recall the loans is a manoeuvre by his parents to gain more control over the caravan empire and has been granted an injunction to ban them from recalling the loans.

Ivy and Alldey are asking the Court of Appeal to overturn that injunction as well as a High Court judge’s ruling allowing Michael to alter his unfair prejudice petition to incorporate a complaint about the loans being recalled.

The main fight for control of the empire is still set to go before the High Court for a full trial on a date yet to be set.