£5.60 a Year for Claimant Whose Behaviour ‘Did His Case No Good’

The son of a baronet who has fought his father through the courts for years over the sale of the family’s estate and his alleged right to support from family trusts has at last won a court decision in his favour.



In making his decision, the judge commented that Philip Howard was ‘an astute and argumentative witness’ who ‘anticipated where questions were leading, often saying “What this seems to be leading to is…..”; and then deploying his grasp of the chronology and his mastery of the documents to avoid an answer to the question put and to present an argument in support of his case’.



The judge also commented that Mr Howard’s behaviour ‘made it extremely difficult to separate recollection from forensic reconstruction’ and that it ‘did his case no good’.



After a thorough analysis of his claims concerning various issues relating to the estate, the judge awarded Mr Howard the sum of £5.60 a year in ground rent from the family lands and ordered that the costs of the necessary conveyances be split between him and his father.