Michelle Mone’s former lawyer is demanding that she apologise and make a donation to a charity for allegedly inflicting “severe and irreparable damage” to his reputation by suggesting he had advised her to tell lies.
Jonathan Coad, a media lawyer and commentator, threatened to issue a preliminary letter for a libel claim against the Conservative peer. In a letter seen by the Guardian, he accused her and her husband of having “abused the hard-won reputation and standing that I enjoyed in the media industry by instructing me repeatedly to disseminate lies”.
Speaking to the Guardian, Coad said he was “cross” and that he wanted the record corrected. “I don’t want any money. All I would ask for is a modest sum to a charity and a letter simply saying that the suggestion that they lied to the media on advice isn’t correct.”
Coad apologised to the Guardian and other media organisations in December for having previously told them that Mone and her husband, Doug Barrowman, had no involvement with a PPE company that received £200m worth of government contracts.
“To the extent that I unintentionally misled your colleagues and title, I offer my unqualified apology,” Coad said last year. “I neither knew nor had any reason to believe that my client was not telling me the truth and wrote to your title in good faith.”
His apology followed an interview that Mone and Barrowman gave to the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg in which they admitted they had repeatedly lied to journalists about their involvement in the company, PPE Medpro, and that it was “not a crime” for them to have done so.
Mone and her husband, the Isle of Man-based businessman Doug Barrowman, are facing a long-running National Crime Agency investigation into allegations of bribery and fraud in their securing of the PPE contracts for the company. Both now admit involvement in the company, but deny wrongdoing.
Mone appeared to suggest in the interview that the couple had been advised to hide their involvement. “The legal team advised myself and my husband not to comment and not to say that of my involvement in PPE Medpro [sic],” she said.
Mone and Barrowman are now represented by the legal firm Grosvenor Law. Last week the firm wrote to Coad accusing him of breaking client confidentiality by apologising and inviting him to report himself to the Solicitors Regulation Authority.
In a furious response, Coad accused the couple of enlisting him into “a concerted and mendacious effort by your clients to cover up the immense benefit to them of a transaction whereby £200m of public money was paid to a company in which they have the most obvious financial interest” and “instructing me repeatedly to disseminate lies” about their links to PPE Medpro.
“When I have been quoted as ‘commenting’ on the stories at issue, it would be more accurate to say that I have been attempting to fend off the publication of a series [of] potentially career-ending allegations, which have all being generated by [your] clients’ iniquitous actions,” he wrote.
Coad said the suggestion that he had acted in breach of his regulatory obligations was “unsustainable”, and alleged in turn that Mone’s references to advisers in her BBC interview could have referred only to him. In effect, he alleged, she was suggesting that he had advised her to lie.
“Baroness Mone received no such advice from me. I was merely instructed to deny her involvement in PPE Medpro based on her own mendacious denials. That allegation is highly defamatory of me, suggesting that I was complicit in your clients’ mendacity, contrary to my obligations [as a solicitor],” he wrote.
He invited them to suggest “remedies” for the dispute. Otherwise, he wrote, “Baroness Mone can expect to receive a protocol compliant pre-action letter setting out the basis on which proceedings for libel will be commenced” and he would send their correspondence to media organisations.
Responding to Coad’s letter, Grosvenor said Mone denied libelling him and that her reference to “advisers” in her BBC interview was generalised rather than specific.
“Neither Mr Barrowman nor Baroness Mone referred to you in any of the interviews by name,” he said. “When the Guardian article featuring your ‘apology’ was published, our clients had to ask who you were.”
A spokesman for Doug Barrowman and Michelle Mone said: “Mr Coad’s position is without any merit. His actions are being referred to the Solicitors Regulation Authority and there is nothing further to say at this time.”
