A luxury hotel owner has triumphed in a ‘completely mad’ 29-year battle with her family over an old suitcase full of photos that belonged to her dead mother.
Judith Andersson, 76, and her brother Tim’s widow Diane Ward, 77, racked up £70,000 in legal fees despite the pictures and papers – wheeled into court in the blue case – having ‘no monetary value’.
Both laid claim to the archive of the family, which founded Jerusalem’s American Colony Hotel, a magnet for celebrities including Lawrence of Arabia, Winston Churchill and Bob Dylan.
Following Frieda Ward’s death in west London in 1993, the trove ended up in the hands of Tim Ward. But after he and Ms Andersson’s other sibling John both died within a month of each other, she sued Ms Ward and her son, as executors of his will, for the archive.
Ms Andersson, who now lives in the US, told Central London county court: ‘It was specifically anticipated that the last one of us remaining alive would hold the archives.’