Elderly parents win £10m court fight with millionaire businessman son after family feud over caravan empire
AN ELDERLY couple have won a £10million court fight with their millionaire businessman son after a family feud over its caravan empire.
The ruling means interim High Court orders from April and May granting Michael Loveridge, 50, control of three family business partnerships and five family companies have been overturned.
He is battling mum Ivy and dad Alldey, 78, for control of a caravan park chain based in Bewdley, Worcestershire, insisting he built it up over the last 20 years and did the "important" work.
And in the "increasingly bitter" family feud, Mr Loveridge is still trying to get his 75-year-old mum imprisoned for allegedly breaching one of the court orders while it still stood.
Ivy and Alldey's lawyers told the court that Michael had also tried to throw them out of their home as part, slamming the move as "hardly the sort of act one would expect of a son towards his parents."
Michael's parents insisted they are the driving force behind the "highly profitable" family chain, having set it up in 1973 when Michael was a toddler.
Lance Ashworth QC for Ivy and Alldey said: "The Loveridge business empire was founded by Ivy and Alldey around 1973, when Michael was about three years old. Michael claims much of the credit for the businesses’ growth and success.
"Ivy and Alldey deny Michael’s version of events.
"A great deal regarding the history of the businesses, and the roles and conduct of various members of the family in relation to them, is hotly disputed.
"Michael has fallen out with Ivy and Alldey and his siblings. The reasons for this are again highly contentious.
"There is no principled basis for giving sole interim control...[to] Michael."
BITTER FEUD
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.
The all-out war for control of the multimillion pound businesses flared up after Michaels's parents accused him of misappropriating £1.25m from one of the companies to buy another caravan park for himself.
Michael is a director of several of the family companies involved in the fight, one of which controls £5m worth of assets and another of which has almost £5m more in capital, according to Companies House.
They tried removing him as the company director director and the fight hit Birmingham High Court earlier this year when Judge Patrick McCahill QC made 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.
Mr Ashworth told the court: "In an email dated 10th June 2020, Michael’s solicitor suggested that the eponymous site owned by Riverside 'should be sold first' ... and said that Ivy and Alldey, Michael’s parents, 'will be required to give up vacant possession' of their home, a bungalow located on the Riverside site, when that site was 'disposed of'.
"This threat to take their home off them was undoubtedly an attempt to apply pressure on Ivy and Alldey and/or to provoke them.
"It is hardly the sort of act one would expect of a son towards his parents."
Mr Ashworth argued against the injunctions giving Michael control of a business empire his parents say represents their "life's work" are “of draconian effect".
He said, in making the orders, Judge McCahill acted in "a way no reasonable judge would have."
His errors of law, principle and approach made them "impossible to maintain."
This threat to take their home off them was undoubtedly an attempt to apply pressure on Ivy and Alldey and/or to provoke them. It is hardly the sort of act one would expect of a son towards his parents.
Lance Ashworth QC
Mr Ashcroft added: "This is especially alarming given the approach that Michael has taken since being given sole control of the partnerships."
But David Stockill, for Michael, claimed the judge got it right when he gave Michael control, insisting he is now the real power behind the business.
He also claimed that Michael had treated his parents well and given them a bigger share of the business than they deserved "out of filial loyalty."
He said: "To describe... this business empire as 'Alldey and Ivy’s lifetime work' can only be pejorative of Michael, if not risible.
"Michael was the driving force of the expansion of the business...Michael was the person who was exercising day-to-day control of the business and had principally been responsible for their strategic development.
"It is not that Alldey and Ivy have not contributed.
"So far as the acquisition, ownership and management of sites is concerned, Michael had a good starting point – his parents owning a site from which the expansion started to take place (and the parents had acquired over the years larger sites, but only one at a time).
"Michael started the expansion as he reached his twenties.
"His parents had thus contributed the ‘seed capital’. They have been well rewarded with the significantly larger interests in the partnerships and companies which Michael allowed them, and does not challenge.
"He did this out of filial loyalty and family responsibility in circumstances where many other individuals would have considered their own interests further.
"The important conclusions the judge reached, albeit provisionally, are - it is submitted - sound. Michael was the day to day and strategic controller of all these enterprises. He has been the driving force of the expansion of the business."
FAMILY SPLIT
The Court of Appeal overturned both the partnership order and the companies order.
Lord Justice Lewison, Lord Justice Floyd and Lady Justice Asplin will give their reasons for doing so at a later date.
But Michael's bid to get his mother jailed is still going ahead.
It started at the beginning of last month when Michael sent in draft an application to imprison his mother, Audey his brother and Mersadie for alleged contemptuous breaches of the partnership injunction.
Ivy denied guilt on all 18 counts of contempt.
After the hearing, Michael's lawyers said the committal proceedings will continue because they relate to a time before the interim orders had been overturned.
Mr Averill had previously told Lady Justice Carr: “Michael, with tremendous misgiving and great upset, is applying to commit his mother to prison. He doesn’t know what else to do.”
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The lawyer said Michael had been the driving force behind the success of the business, based in Bewdley, Worcs, and only allowed his parents to remain in nominal control out of a sense of loyalty to them.
Mr Averill added: “Ivy and Alldey are so far anti-Michael that they would do anything to destroy him, including harming his and their own interests.” He said that before the court orders were made they had tried to make him bankrupt.
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The case will now go back to the High Court for a full trial on a later date.
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