AN award-winning Peaky Blinders costumier has won a £40,000 libel battle, after being accused of portraying her late husband’s mum as a “cruel, uncaring monster-in-law” on Facebook.
Yvonne Tattersall, 64, an Emmy-winning designer and costumier who supplied outfits for the hit BBC show, fell out with mother-in-law Lynette Tattersall after Mick Tattersall – Yvonne’s husband and Lynette’s son – died in 2019.
It led to a legal battle over money, and spilled into the High Court after Lynette, 81, – an interior designer to the stars – accused her daughter-in-law of trashing her reputation in a Facebook post.
She claimed she was portrayed as a “cruel uncaring monster-in-law,” ruining her standing in the local community and making her feel uncomfortable in the small Lancashire community where they had both lived.
The pensioner sued Yvonne for libel, demanding £40,000 damages, but has now seen her case thrown out by a judge, who said it was “unreal” for her to think she could prove any “serious reputational damage” was caused by the post.
Rejecting her claim, Mrs Justice Collins-Rice said: “The present claim is not… a proper vehicle for the claimant’s pursuit of her grievances against the defendant,” adding that it was “not in the public interest” for Lynette to be allowed to continue with it.
A member of BAFTA, Yvonne Tattersall spent two decades as a costume designer and supervisor in film and TV, winning an Emmy for her efforts on Great Expectations, as well as working on Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason and the 2012 movie version of Les Miserables.
After moving back to her native north west, she set up the 20th Century Costume Hire Company, which enjoyed great success, being hired for productions including Peaky Blinders, Sexy Beast and the Sex Pistols biopic Pistol.
Yvonne and Mick Tattersall were married in 2015, but he died in November 2019, with his grieving mum and widow then falling out bitterly over the couple’s family home in Billington village, near Clitheroe.
Lynette claimed she had provided her son and his wife with “financial assistance” throughout their relationship, including taking out a mortgage to allow them to purchase the house in 2012, subject to them making the repayments.
In 2021, around 18 months after her son’s death, she sued her daughter-in-law and her son’s estate, seeking an order for sale of the property so she could recoup loans and payments owed for the mortgage.
But during the county court row, which led to Yvonne paying her mother-in-law about £20,000, she made the Facebook post which led to her being sued again at the High Court.
In it, Yvonne wrote: “Went out tonight in my village for the first time in nearly two years since my husband died, I have not been able to go out because people who used to be my friend have decided to support my mother in law, a women who has tried to make me homeless and continually told lies about me.
“Anyone who really knows me knows I am not capable of what she is accusing me off.
“I no longer want anything to do with anyone who is friends with her so goodbye I shall be deleting you.”
Lynette claimed Yvonne had blackened her reputation by wrongly accusing her of trying to make her homeless, causing her to be ostracised and claiming she had lied about the younger woman.
Her barrister, Lily Walker-Parr, said: “Allegations that a mother-in-law would endeavour to make her daughter-in-law homeless, continually tell lies about her and ostracise her in her local community are particularly grave and made even worse by the fact that she has recently been widowed.
Yvonne Tattersall has spent two decades working as a costume designer and supervisor in film and TV[/caption]
Lynette accused Yvonne had blackening her reputation[/caption]
“It echoes the derogatory ‘monster-in-law’ trope of the cruel uncaring mother-in-law.
Such an allegation is therefore sufficient to give rise to an inference of serious reputational harm.”
Lynette, who has since moved to Italy, claimed the September 2021 post – which was reacted to 57 times – resulted in her becoming an outcast in her home village of Billington.
One of her friends, Stephen Atkinson, gave evidence to back her account of serious reputational harm, telling the judge that Lynette was a “highly regarded interior decorator.”
“She had worked for David Moores, the former chairman of Liverpool Football Club, Richard Chamberlain from out of the Thornbirds and also All Saints, the pop group,” he said.
“She told me she used to get text messages from David Moores.
“She had also had done a lot of work for David Moyes and his wife and told me all about the parties she used to go to with them.
“She was celebrated by people who wanted to be associated with her.”
However, that all changed because of Yvonne’s Facebook post, with Mr Atkinson telling the judge that after Lynette set up home in Italy following the Facebook controversy she was shunned by her former celebrity circle.
The libel case originally went before Mr Justice Julian Knowles last year, but after he fell ill was re-listed before Mrs Justice Collins Rice, who gave judgment yesterday.
Granting Yvonne’s application to strike out the claim, she said Lynette had not shown that she suffered “serious harm” as a result of the Facebook post.
Online responses to the post were not “capable of materially supporting an inferential case that reading the allegations complained of caused the responders to think less well” of Lynette, she said.
The post had been made in the context of a “private Facebook account” and was not a mass publication, while close friends and family of Lynette would be unlikely to have had their views of her changed on the strength of it.
“The claimant testifies that, more generally since finding out about the post, she has felt ‘like people do not contact me as much as before, like they prefer to stay away or not get involved’.
“She has not wanted to return to the village in England, and has been there on only two occasion since.
“On one of those occasions she had felt uncomfortable and insecure, and describes a feeling of being stared at and not spoken to by some individuals from whom she might have expected a greater degree of warmth.
“The burden is on the claimant to establish that any of that, if accepted, can properly be attributed to readership of the words complained of to a degree capable of being described as serious reputational harm.
“The prospects of her discharging that burden on the basis of inference from this evidence can fairly, in my judgment, be described as ‘unreal’.”
Other factors – including Lynette’s loss of social confidence as a result of the row and people simply wanting to avoid becoming involved in a family dispute – were more likely explanations of her perception of how she was treated in the village, she added.
“In all these circumstances, it is my conclusion that the prospects of a court being persuaded to infer serious reputational harm from the facts and evidence before it are also unreal,” she continued.
“The inherent gravity of the words complained of is not, in context, more than modest.
“The reasonable maximum extent of primary publication is no more than moderate.
“It was to a limited class of potentially identifiable family and friends in a polarised context and there is no evidence from – or materially about – any of them.
“The immediate commentary on the post is not capable of materially supporting an inference of serious reputational harm to the claimant as a result of reading the words complained of.
“The present claim is not, for the reasons I have given, a proper vehicle for the claimant’s pursuit of her grievances against the defendant.
“It is not in the interests of justice, or the public interest, for it to proceed.”
Lynette’s claim was struck out.
