Parry’s costs are estimated to be £715,361 while Gourlay’s are £487,132, with Mitch given two weeks by the judge to make the interim payments.
Mitch has also been ordered to pay the pair’s legal costs on an indemnity basis, a situation usually reserved for when one side has behaved particularly badly.
Judge Clarke said that in taking the two women to court, Mitch had “deliberately turned this case into large-scale and expensive litigation, in circumstances calculated to exert commercial pressure on the defendants to settle on his terms”.
“This deliberate course of action was undertaken by the claimant with the aim of damaging the defendants’ reputations and professional prospects in order to force them to settle the litigation on his terms and pay him the proceeds of sale of their items,” she said.
“He did so, knowing that they were vulnerable both financially and in status, and that his public allegations and insinuations of impropriety would only increase their vulnerability
“The fact that he knowingly and deliberately did this to two young women who had stood faithfully by Amy, and also by him and his family, and who had demonstrated their honesty and integrity over many years, makes his unreasonable conduct particularly serious.”