Amy Winehouse's Father Ordered to Pay $1.3 Million to Late Singer's Friends After Losing Baseless Auction Lawsuit

A London judge has ordered Mitch Winehouse, the father of late singer Amy Winehouse, to pay more than $1.3 million to two of his daughter's closest friends after a High Court judge tore apart the lawsuit he brought against them over auctioned memorabilia.

Justice Sarah Clarke handed down the costs ruling on Wednesday, requiring Mitch to pay £963,851 to Naomi Parry, Amy's longtime stylist, and Catriona Gourlay, a close friend of the singer, as punishment for pursuing what the judge branded a "speculative, weak, opportunistic and thin" case from the outset.

The ruling capped off a legal battle that began when Mitch, acting as administrator of his daughter's estate, sued the two women in 2023 over auctions they had organized selling off items of Amy's clothing, shoes and jewelry. He argued that the pieces never legally belonged to Parry and Gourlay and that the proceeds should have gone to the estate instead. That claim collapsed entirely in April, when Clarke ruled following trial that Amy had lawfully gifted the items to her friends while she was alive, and that Mitch had known this all along yet chose to pursue the case regardless.

In her costs decision, Clarke did not hold back in describing how badly the case had been handled and how unfairly it had been pursued. She wrote that Mitch went after Parry and Gourlay "aggressively and relentlessly" in a bid to pressure them into surrendering money from the sales, and said his accusations against the pair were "serious and unfounded," causing lasting harm to their reputations, careers, finances and even their health.

The judge was particularly pointed about the fact that the two women had remained loyal to Amy throughout her life and had never given the Winehouse family any reason for suspicion, making the case against them all the more indefensible in her eyes.

"The defendants had consistently proved themselves to be devoted friends of Amy's, who stood by her and supported her over many years and were devastated by her death," Clarke wrote, adding that Parry and Gourlay had shown nothing but "honesty, integrity and care" toward Amy and the Winehouse family throughout their friendship. She went further, stating that Mitch's decision to target "two young women who had stood faithfully by Amy and also by him and his family" made his conduct especially serious in her assessment.

The dispute traced back to a pair of auctions held at Julien's Auctions in Los Angeles in 2021 and 2023, where Parry sold 56 items belonging to Amy for a combined $878,000, while Gourlay auctioned off 85 additional pieces that brought in $344,000.

Among the standout lots was the dress Amy wore during her final live performance in Serbia, which fetched $243,000 at auction. It was in the aftermath of these sales that Mitch filed suit, insisting the items remained estate property despite his daughter having given them away years earlier.

Clarke made clear in her latest ruling that Mitch's defeat at trial was not a close call, noting that his case had been undermined from the start by flaws he refused to acknowledge. She wrote that he "unreasonably refused to accept the defendants' explanations for their legitimate possession" of the disputed items and pressed forward with serious allegations all the way to the end of the case "despite the clear and obvious evidence that fatally undermined him."

Following the ruling, Parry addressed the outcome directly in a statement posted to Instagram, saying the legal fight had consumed nearly five years of her life and taken a toll on her career and finances that she struggled to put into words. She said the one consolation was that the judge had now definitively cleared her name.