Zipporah Lisle-Mainwaring, the Kensington resident who became embroiled in a high-profile planning dispute by painting her multi-million pound townhouse red in red and white stripes, is involved in a fresh legal dispute, this time with Associated Newspapers, the publisher of the Daily Mail.
Mainwaring is suing the publisher over articles it published about the striped house. Her lawyers claim the Daily Mail “never had any intention” of publishing her “side of the story”, and “put words in her mouth”, according to a ruling today.
Her planning battle with Kensington & Chelsea council generated headlines across the national media when she painted the house in 2015.
The design was said to have horrified neighbours in the exclusive area, and was liked to a circus big top and a beach hut.
The council ordered her to paint out the stripes or face prosecution. However last year, after a lengthy legal battle, she won the right to keep the house as it is.
Her new legal battle received a setback today when High Court Judge Sir David Eady refused a requests from her lawyers to give them access to potentially hundreds of documents relating to the claim.
They had been seeking a wide range of information from the newspaper, including emails between journalists and editors, interview notes, receipts, and communications between the newspaper and the council.
However, in a read-out judgment, Eady J dismissed the requests saying that the documents sought were too wide-ranging and undefined.
“The document sought need to be defined and confined” he said.
